How Close Is El Paso To Mexico

El Paso, Texas CNN —

I-yr-onetime Brenda's tiny feet are bare on the common cold asphalt of an El Paso parking lot every bit the harsh reality starts to sink in for her parents. They are undocumented. They are homeless. And their daughter barely escaped death when they crossed the Rio Grande.

"My girl would have died because she was super frozen," said Glenda Matos.

Matos' pain is clear in her eyes equally she recalls her daughter being drenched, in the freezing cold, all while crying hysterically. Matos and her husband, Anthony Blanco, say they had nothing to go along their girl warm, not even torso oestrus, because they, too, were wet and cold.

Matos says she hugged Brenda tightly and ran from house to house begging for assistance until they finally found a kind El Paso resident who helped them with clothes and shelter.

"I asked God for assistance," Glenda said. "God… put those people in my way."

For Matos, the tiny red rosary with an epitome of Our Lady of Guadalupe, hanging from Brenda's ancle, saved them. Matos says she wrapped the religious token on her girl's little body for protection when they left their native Venezuela.

Brenda and her parents are some of the hundreds of migrants living in squalor in the streets of downtown El Paso around Sacred Centre Parish. The makeshift army camp – with its piles of blankets, strollers and tents lining both sides of a busy street – has city officials expressing concerns about safety and public health given the expanse is packed with migrants who have no running water or proper shelter.

The surge of migrants aggregating hither started a few weeks agone, when anxiety virtually the scheduled end of the Trump-era pandemic public health rule known as Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants to plow themselves in to border government or to cantankerous into the United States illegally in a very short menses of fourth dimension.

Title 42 allows immigration authorities to swiftly return some migrants to Mexico. The policy was scheduled to elevator last week, only a Supreme Court ruling kept the dominion in identify while legal challenges play out in court.

While the impact of the ruling has sent ripples throughout the southern border, the scene in El Paso is one of a kind. It's the only U.S. border town where hundreds of migrants are living in the streets longer than expected. It's a new miracle that urban center officials say had never happened during prior migrant surges.

It's driven, in role, by the anxiety created by the doubtfulness of Championship 42, which motivated some migrants to cross the border illegally. These migrants don't take family or sponsors in the US to receive them. And many too fear that traveling out of town without the proper paperwork could pb to anticipation past US immigration authorities.

The misery around Sacred Heart Parish is palpable. Evelyn Palma has blankets hooked and draped on a chain-linked fence to keep the cold and the drizzle from hitting her 5 children, ages 1 to viii, some of them shirtless. She'southward been living on the street for 8 days. Merely Fri was peculiarly miserable because it was 40 degrees and information technology poured overnight.

"We woke up drenched," Palma said.

The 24-twelvemonth-one-time female parent from Honduras says she and her children turned themselves in to immigration authorities earlier this month, just they were swiftly returned to Mexico, probable nether Title 42. That's why, she says, that a week ago she decided to evade authorities by crossing the river.

She is part of the growing number of migrants who El Paso city officials say have decided to enter the US illegally and, for diverse reasons, have not left the metropolis.

"They are people who came into the country in anticipation of Title 42 going away," said Mario D'Agostino, El Paso's deputy city director.

The living atmospheric condition Palma and other migrants are indelible has officials concerned about their rubber and overall public health. City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta says that the spread of affliction is top of mind.

"We are nonetheless in the center of what is beingness called a 'tripledemic,' with standing high infection levels of upper respiratory infections across the community," Cruz-Acosta said.

And while the city has space for about 1,500 migrants at shelters that accept been erected at the convention center and at a public schoolhouse, those beds are just offered to migrants who have turned themselves in to border authorities and accept been allowed to stay in the U.s. pending their immigration cases. Those migrants receive documentation from US Customs and Border Protection that allows them to travel within the country.

Migrants who enter the country illegally are non offered metropolis-provided shelter because federal dollars are beingness used to human foot the nib. And those monies can't be used to serve people who entered the country illegally, according to D'Agostino.

Metropolis officials have been referring undocumented migrants to not-turn a profit organizations and churches like Sacred Centre Parish, which turns into a shelter when nighttime falls.

That'south why hundreds of migrants aggregate on the streets around the church, hoping to score one of the 120 to 130 slots to enter the church for the night.

Around 6 p.thousand., a line of migrants forms outside the church'south gymnasium. Parents tin exist seen clutching their children to try to keep them warm. Women and men with children are given priority, according to Rafael García, the priest that runs the shelter. García says information technology's tough to send people away just that his church has limited resources to serve the growing need.

Angello Sánchez and his 4-year-old son Anyeider were allowed into the shelter for the nighttime several times this week. The Colombian male parent says he was trying to protect his son from the cold because his fiddling face nonetheless had windburn from being out in the elements during the recent freeze.

"I got here from southern United mexican states on a train. Information technology was so cold and he wasn't wearing any jacket," Angello said.

Palma, the female parent of five, says she was offered entry into the shelter with her children but decided not to take the offer because a pregnant friend who is accompanying her was denied access.

El Paso, which means "The Laissez passer" in Spanish, has historically been a gateway for migrants passing through into the United States.

"For hundreds of years people have been passing through and it'due south just office of their journey," D'Agostino said. "In normal times the community doesn't even realize it."

But this migrant surge is different because migrants are staying for days and even more than than a week, metropolis officials say.

Besides lacking family unit or sponsors in the United states of america to receive them, many migrants don't have money to pay for their transportation out of the city. And in the makeshift migrant camp around Sacred Heart Parish, give-and-take is spreading virtually another cistron that has some undocumented migrants hunkering downwards in El Paso: The fear of getting detained at immigration checkpoints located in the interior of the US.

In the terminal week, at least 364 undocumented migrants who were traveling in commercial buses headed to northern cities were detained at these immigration checkpoints, according to tweets posted by El Paso'southward border patrol chief.

Palma says she heard virtually the checkpoints and the apprehensions and decided to stay in El Paso longer while she figures out what to do.

"If immigration detains me, they'll render me," Palma said.

Juan Pérez, from Venezuela, was down the street and said that "immigration is in the exits [of the city]… they'll return u.s. and send us to Mexico."

The US has 110 Edge Patrol checkpoints in the southern and northern borders, where vehicles are screened for the "illegal flow of people and contraband," co-ordinate to a recent Usa Government Accountability Office study. The checkpoints are usually between 25 and 100 miles from the border, co-ordinate to the same study.

Anthony Blanco says he's not agape of existence detained at these interior checkpoints.

"I've walked through many different countries without documents. I don't think we're going to exist detained, just if that happens, information technology was God'due south will," Blanco said.

For days this week, Blanco has been belongings a sign on the street corner that reads, "Aid me with work and then I can support my wife and babe," and asking drivers who pass by for coin for passenger vehicle tickets to Denver.

Why Denver? He says give-and-take has spread that there is work there and living is more affordable.

Friday morning, a 24-hour interval which was peculiarly miserable because information technology was cold after a difficult overnight rain, Blanco was all smiles. He says he had collected plenty money to go along his journey to Denver.

"Thank God," Blanco said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/31/us/el-paso-homeless-border-migrants-title-42/index.html

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