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By Rebecca Person
December 13, 2023 (Jacumba Hot Springs, CA) --
Local volunteers in isolated East county border towns Jacumba and Boulevard are seeking support for humanitarian aid for migrants via a new crowd-funding campaign. Volunteers set up this fundraising account in the face of a lack of support by government entities such as Border Patrol and the National Guard and nonprofits such as the Red Cross, which have failed to utilize their resources to help masses of border crossers still arriving on U.S. ground. Border Patrol has directed them into barren detention sites with zero supplies. Water, shelter and food resources are being supplied mostly by volunteers through donations.
San Diego County Board of Supervisors did vote Dec. 5, immediately after new member Monica Montgomery Steppe joined the Board, to approve $3 million dollars to supplement earlier amounts spent on a migrant welcome center in El Cajon, but desolate rural stretches where migrants first enter the US are left without funding.
Supervisor Jim Desmond was the lone vote against the allocation of the $3 million saying he felt the federal government should be allocating funds and that the burden of migrant assistance should not be shouldered by the County. The federal government has not responded to requests for direct funding to aid migrants.
Volunteer Sam Schultz and family, who reside in Jacumba near where migrants are crossing from Mexico to the U.S., still make and deliver 600+ meals daily to migrants stranded at camps off of Interstate 8 at the easternmost edge of San Diego County. The area is high desert wilderness with high winds and increasingly low temperatures. With help from some churches and humanitarian aid groups such as Border Kindness, local efforts have been going continuously since September; local residents’ efforts began far earlier. The first intermittent waves of undocumented migrants began scaling the border fence near rural Jacumba Hot Springs, population 500+, last May, as East County Magazine was the first media outlet to report.
But many are wondering when real aid will arrive, when migrants won’t be waiting in the close-to-freezing night temperatures for days. Red Cross declined, awaiting a signal from Border Patrol, which apparently never came. Several groups concerned about the migrant crisis also have opposed allocating more funds without more transparency on how funds are actually used. Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and executive director of Immigrant Defenders’ Law Center is quoted by the San Diego Union Tribune as saying “We have raised concerns about the negligence of wasting public funds on an ill-conceived and ill-equipped welcome center while people die in open-air detention sites.”
Volunteer leader Schultz also raises a question as to why these migrants are not just allowed to pass through the existing points of entry (Calexico, Tecate, Tijuana etc). Schultz asks: “If you’re going to let them through anyway, why not let them in where people are supposed to come in? Nobody’s stopping them anyway, so why not?”
In response to those who oppose undocumented border crossers, many of whom seek asylum in the U.S. after fleeing desperate conditions in their homelands, Schultz asks, “What would happen if we stopped doing this?” in reference to providing meals, jackets, blankets and water daily as he hands info sheets in to one of today’s volunteers.
The sheets, which are printed in 11 different languages, contain information needed by stranded migrants clarifying where they are and what they are expected to do as well as what likely steps are for them to take in the immediate future (such as the ‘credible fear interview’ they will be expected to conduct with border officials), and suggestions such as locating an attorney, etc.
There are children and women among the hundreds coming over, but most migrants are men of military age. Their countries of origin include Turkey, Afghanistan, China, Argentina, India, Guatemala, Colombia, Haiti, and others.
Mexicans are not represented in the current groups arriving, according to Border Patrol on scene.
Photo by Ian Abramson
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