Officials: Wave of immigrants taxing South Texas services
South Texas officials say they’re struggling to provide services to a fresh wave of immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally.
City leaders in McAllen say a support center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church saw its busiest month in October since opening two years ago, with more than 5,600 immigrants recorded.
The city and local groups have spent nearly $1 million over two years to provide showers, tents and other needs, Mayor Jim Darling told The Monitor newspaper.
He said one pressing issue was the lack of buses leaving the city that could take immigrants elsewhere to obtain work and services. Officials have asked bus companies if they could add more trips to help reduce the number of immigrants staying overnight, he said.
“This week they started a bus that leaves at 1:30 in the morning, so that should help us significantly, and they said that if there is more traffic they were willing to do more,” Darling said. “But one of the issues is that it comes back empty – the traffic is northbound, not southbound.”
Since 2014, the Rio Grande Valley has led the nation as the region with the most apprehensions of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Hundreds of thousands of people have sought asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last two years, a dramatic increase that shows how migrants have changed from mostly Mexican men trying to evade capture to more Central American families who often turn themselves in, according to a federal report obtained last month by The Associated Press.
Asylum seekers, many of them fleeing drug-fueled violence south of the border, peaked in 2014 at 170,000, nearly triple the 63,000 who arrived the previous year. Before 2012, there were fewer than 30,000 a year.
