Council allows City Manager to use City resources to help asylum seekers

City Council Monday unanimously approved a motion to allow City Manager Tommy Gonzalez to provide any resources needed to help care for the hundreds of undocumented immigrants seeking asylum who are entering El Paso every week.

The item was listed in the agenda with the following text: “In order to protect the public health, safety and welfare of El Paso residents and the individuals passing though the City of El Paso, the City manager is granted broad authority until June 25, 2019 to take all action necessary to commit, direct, and assign necessary personnel and resources, to provide humanitarian relief to migrants released by federal authorities into the El Paso community.”

El Paso Fire Chief Mario D’Agostino told City Council about 55,000 migrants have come through El Paso since January 1, 2019.

“What we’re doing is keeping the options open in case something was to happen. At this point, the Annunciation House has been able to (care for) the refugees as it has been going on and so we haven’t had to use many resources, but we want to have those abilities in place because we never know what tomorrow is going to bring,” said D’Agostino.

Non-Government Organizations like the Annunciation House have been paying for the majority of migrant welfare. D’Agostino said the Annunciation House has spent more than $1 million to house migrants while they meet up with relatives or sponsor families elsewhere in the U.S.

If organizations like Annunciation House were not taking care of the migrants, it would cost the City of El Paso $25,000 to house 400 migrants per night, D’Agostino said.

So far, the City has only spent $36,000 to transport and house some of the migrants who have been released into El Paso by federal immigration authorities.

“It’s an ongoing issue. It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s not going to go away until Congress developes some fortitude to be able to act on it,” said El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, “(Congress is) responsible for the issue that we’re dealing with today because of its inability to deal with our rational immigration process.”

Margo says that when the U.S. Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement are unable to hold the migrants, they release them on the streets with nowhere to go. “There have been so many migrants released, we’ve gone from 300 to 700 or more per day,” the mayor said.