How hundreds of migrants are being abandoned in El Paso, Texas

December 25th, a day in which many of us celebrate Christmas and the birth of Jesus, about 180 migrants were being released in the streets of Downtown El Paso, TX. Two days earlier, on Sunday, about 200 migrants were released at a Greyhound bus station also in Downtown El Paso. This is what US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been doing in the past few days -- dropping off hundreds of migrants in random places in El Paso to fend for themselves. To understand the situation a little better we spoke with Juan Ortiz, a member of Cosecha from El Paso who has been volunteering with a rapid response network of community members and organizations who provide immediate assistance to the migrants in El Paso.

Note: The crisis at the border has been growing, but so has the resistance. You can donate now to help sustain the work of Juan and hundreds of others living at the border giving direct and mutual aid to migrants everyday.

Cat: Juan, can you give us some context as to the situation that is currently unfolding in El Paso, where migrants who were held in the detention centers in Tornillo and the surrounding area are now being released. They’ve been held, many of them families, for months while their asylum claims are processed — then what?

Juan: El Paso has always been a transitory place for migrants. What’s abnormal about this situation is the time, place, and conditions in which they are releasing folks. We don’t know why they are releasing so many folks at the same time. If it is because of the shutdown, or because of all the pressure we have been putting on them to close Tornillo.

Cat: Can you share about the Greyhound experience?

Juan: I got a text very late at night [from a rapid response network that was formed in El Paso after the family separation crisis some months earlier] telling me to come down to the Greyhound Station as soon as I could, because there was a major crisis going on. I drove down immediately and when I got there I walked into this really really horrific scene. They had released a large number of migrants. They were in pretty bad conditions. They were saying they had not eaten or had water, and had no ways of communicating with their families. What also made it really complicated is that a lot of these migrants don’t speak Spanish as their primary language, but some indigenous dialects [Mayan dialects]. It made it hard to even let them know where they were at.

Cat: Who were these migrants?

Juan: There were a few women, but the majority of them were men with children. They were hungry and thirsty, especially the children. Kids were eating and drinking water desperately. They kept saying they had not had food or water in a while. They were consuming what we were giving them voraciously. We were really overwhelmed. They were in bad conditions, sniffling and sneezing. No proper hygiene. A young man came up to us feeling very sick and we had to give him some over-the-counter medicine immediately -- It was clear that he needed to go to a doctor. This made me think of Jacqueline (who died at a nearby hospital) and the other little boy who died.

Cat: How did Greyhound staff react?

Juan: We were pleading with the manager to let people stay in the station, so people could be protected from the elements outside. The manager kept telling us that only those with tickets could stay and the rest would be getting kicked out. That’s when organizations and some governmental agencies pleaded with the city to bring buses to transport them to shelters. At first, migrants were afraid to board the buses because they thought they were going back to detention. We had to reassure them that they could trust us.

Cat: This was definitely a crisis.

Juan: The local capacity is exhausted, trying to respond to these drop offs. The city has an agreement with ICE where the city has to be notified at least 24 hours before a mass release, so that they can be prepared to deal with this humanitarian crisis. It felt like being in a bad Christmas movie.

Cat: Right, because this is happening during Christmas.

Juan: Yes. It augmented the needs even more because it was happening during Christmas. Stores had, or were shutting down, because it’s Christmas. So it was difficult to even go buy basic necessities to give to migrants. We could only get foods like Pizza and McDonalds because those were the only places that were still open. There are few 24hr stores in El Paso too. It was a bad situation. We were so unprepared. Not to mention that we lacked volunteers. Many people are away for the holidays, so the city is empty.

Cat: Can you share a little more about how the community is responding?

Juan: A lot of the people that are responding now are people that came together after the family separation crisis, when the Tornillo tent city was set up as a detention location. Community members and organizations or groups came together to resist, demanding to close down Tornillo. This rapid response process and network was built after that. Through this network we have been able to find places for people to stay (including shelters, hotels, etc.), bring in donated materials, and in general just find resources that are needed. But once again, we had not been dealing with large numbers of people being released at the same time. Right now we are looking into larger facilities, maybe churches or schools, where recently released migrants can stay at.

Cat: Because it’s a lot more people.

Juan: There have also been other releases that have not gotten as much attention as the Greyhound situation. People have also been released in parks. A group of people were dropped off in park near Duranguito. That they are dropping people off at parks is even more dangerous because it’s cold outside and people don’t know where they are. But also, they are farther away from the public, so who is going to see them? Maybe it’s so the media doesn’t find out too.

Cat: Does anyone know about how many people have been released this way so far? And are ya’ll expecting more people to released like this in the next few days?

Juan: I just got forwarded something from News Report with the numbers that I need to check again, but there have been a couple of releases reported. One of 518 people, one of 186 people, one of 200 people and a couple expected this weekend of 200 each. But within the span of just this week I want to say that 1,500 people will be released in El Paso without any kind of infrastructure. And like I said, from the group I saw in Greyhound, the majority of the people are men with children; about half of those men have more than one child with them. Also most of the children I saw there were all under 12.

Cat: What supports are needed? How can someone who is not in El Paso help?

Juan: On the ground we are in dire need of full time volunteers, who understand the context we are working with, who understand the culture, and of course the language. That is one of the biggest needs right now. We have a list of materials that we need too. Right now we are in need of hygienic materials such as soap, hand sanitizers, toothpaste, etc. There is also a big need for underwear and socks. The weather here has taken a turn in a matter of days -- it has been really cold. Migrants are not dressed for the cold weather. A lot of them have been wearing the same clothes for days. We know we can’t give them entire wardrobes because that is expensive but we should at least try to give them clean underwear and socks to protect their feet from the cold. We also need bus tickets to try to get folks to family members (for those that have them), so we need money to buy them bus tickets. We just need basic necessities, like food.

Cat: So for those of us who are not in Texas and want to help out. Would donations be the best way to do that?

Juan: Donations and gift cards. Gift cards for stores where we can get food and supplies would be helpful. We all know Walmart is problematic, but it’s one of the few stores in El Paso that is convenient, and open 24hrs, so if people want to donate gift cards for Walmart, those would be helpful. Or Target. We can even give them to folks so that they can use them on their journeys. So for people that are far and want to help, gift cards and monetary donations can go a long way and will make a change in the life of one of these migrants.

Cat: Thank you so much Juan for all the work you are doing there and for sharing this with all of us.

Juan: Thank you. And yes, we are inviting people to resist and assist. Right now we need a lot of people to assist with this crisis. But people are stepping up, and we will continue to do that. Tornillo is still up. People are still being held in bad conditions. But we are here, and will continue to resist as a community.

Movimiento Cosecha is a non-violent movement fighting for the permanent protection, dignity, and respect of all 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. To support the work of organizers like Juan, you can chip in here.