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By Miriam Raftery
Photo courtesy of ECM news partner KGTV 10 News.
February 25, 2024 (San Diego) – Bipartisan calls for federal help are escalating after closure of a local migrant welcoming center due to lack of funds amid an unprecedented surge in migrants from around the world.
The migrant center run by SBCS (formerly known as South Bay Community Center) closed its doors Thursday night. Kathie Lembo, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, stated, “As the number of migrants arriving at the center has increased significantly over the last few weeks, our finite resources have been stretched to the limit.”
San Diego County had allocated $6 million to fund the welcome center as an alternative to Border Patrol dropping off massive numbers of migrants at transit centers. The welcome center had provided temporary shelter, food, Wifi connections, and travel information for the vast majority of migrants seeking to rejoin family members elsewhere in the United States. The funds were expected to last until March.
But with more than 100,000 migrants arriving in our region since September, the center ran out of funds. Now Border Patrol, which lacks sufficient facilities to detain migrants, is once again dropping many of them off at transit centers to fend for themselves, or accept help from volunteers.
At the Iris transit center in Chula Vista, volunteer groups have pitched in to offer migrants free bus rides to the Old Town Transit Center or to the airport, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
People like Bubacar Diallo, an African asylum seeker interviewed by ECM news partner 10 News. "There's a lot of poverty in my country," he said. "There are no jobs, a lot of corruption. I come here to get a job and support my family."
Immigrant Defenders Law Center managing attorney Paulina Reyes-Perrariz told NBC San Diego that the legal group will resume efforts to provide “much needed emergency humanitarian aid along with other organizations and community members that did it before,” though there are more migrants now than in the recent past crossing the border in San Diego County, including East County communities such as Jacumba, Campo, and Boulevard.
Democrat Nora Vargas, Chair of the County Board of Supervisors, last week asked President Joe Biden for help with the migrants, noting that the County is challenged as it works to aid those who suffered flood damage from the severe January storms. “In light of the numerous natural disasters impacting our region, it is unsustainable for the County to continue its efforts to aid in addressing and ameliorating this persistent humanitarian need and crisis,” she said of the migrant surge in her letter to the President on Feb. 16.
Supervisors Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson, both Republicans, have called for federal help and a shutdown of the border in the interim.
“The federal government must take immediate action to rectify this problem,” Desmond said in statement issued to media. According to Desmond, the number of migrants coming into San Diego County has increased from 300 to 400 a day several months ago to between 800 and 900 in recent weeks. The cost to operate the now-shuttered migrant center also surged from $1 million to $1.5 million per month, Vargas has said.
Supervisor Anderson sent a letter to President Biden asking him to “take immediate steps to close the international border and to take the action necessary to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis.”
Congressional Democrats have long sought comprehensive border reforms, coupling increased border security with “Dreamer” protections for young immigrants and a more humane system for people to apply for asylum without risking their lives scaling walls or crossing deserts or mountains.
Most recently, members of Congress in both parties had agreed on a more narrow bill that would have included closing the border during migrant surges. But Republicans in the Senate reversed course and killed that bill at the urging of Donald Trump, who wants to postpone any immigration or border reforms until he could potentially take office in 2025 if reelected.
At the National Governors Association at the White House last Friday, President Biden said the blocked bill also included ““the most fair and humane reforms for legal immigration in a long time.”
Biden told the governors, “if this matters to you, it matters to your state, tell your members of Congress, who are standing in the way, to show a little spine.”
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