City, county officials react to Trump’s new executive orders on illegal immigration

Down at the El Paso City Hall and Enrique Moreno County Courthouse, officials are discussing what's to be expected in El Paso with President Trump's newest executive orders to secure the southern border.

Deputy City Manager Mario D'Agostino said that now with the CBP One app canceled — which is how a majority of migrants have passed through — migrant housing by the Office of Emergency Management is now at a halt.

D'Agostino also said that the number of daily encounters of incoming migrants has dropped drastically, going from under 200 migrants a day, to now under 100 in the last 10 days.

"With the presidential orders that he put out yesterday, it really has affected our operations. We're not getting those releases, those daily releases that we've seen before," said D'Agostino. "And so OEM will be stepping down, they'll be just doing a monitoring from afar. But our normal operations where we've been doing housing that's nonexistent at this point in time, since we don't have those numbers, very limited number of people were released today, probably around a dozen range."

According to the Deputy City Manager, the city has ended all housing, feeding and transporting for migrants.

However, city and county officials haven't been given any executive orders to apply enforcement or any other official information.

County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said what he's mostly concerned about is having to enforce, arrest and jail illegal migrants, and not getting the proper funding from FEMA.

Once local officials receive executive order, Samaniego said that they're prepared to cooperate in any way that's needed to protect the border.

"We're always prepared, we have the process center that's ready, we have great relationships with the with the rescue mission, with Annunciation House, with Opportunity Center for the Homeless," said the county judge. "We're always in contact. So we're not sitting on our hands hoping, you know, let's see what happens."

Samaniego and D'Agostino both said that El Paso Police will be focusing on enforcing local law, and not federal law.

The county judge also added that if he believes anything Trump passes is considered to be unconstitutional or a violation of human rights, he tends to oppose those actions.