Shelters And City Governments Scramble To Help Migrants In The Rio Grande Valley

More than 76,000 people were apprehended or surrendered on the Southern border in February and administration officials project that number would surpass 100,000 for March. The highest number of crossings are taking place in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. The Good Neighbor Settlement House, a homeless shelter in Brownsville, Texas, is now also being used to house migrants released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody. They normally help a couple dozen migrants a day, but recently the numbers shot up to more than 400 a day. The migrants are brought here for a short period of time and can shower, eat and get some clean clothes. Volunteers help migrants work out travel arrangements so they can meet up with relatives or sponsors in other parts of the country while they await their day in immigration court. All along the Texas border, cities are dealing with an unprecedented influx of migrants. Migrants usually arrive at the shelter with some documentation about relatives or sponsors to contact to arrange shelter while they await their immigration court proceedings — that wait can take months, even years, because of the huge backlog of cases. But Marianela Ramirez-Watson, the director for the Refugee Respite Program, says last weekend they ran into a new problem. "A group of people showed up without their paperwork and so the minute we caught it we called CBP and they said, 'Oh my gosh, they weren't supposed to send that bus yet,' " said Ramirez-Watson. "Some confusion when you're dealing with as many people as they are." While local organizations, like Good Neighbor, handle the releases, the Trump administration continues to call on Congress to change immigration laws to stave off what they consider a national emergency at the border...MORE