El Paso officials worry migrant camp could spread infectious disease

 Thousands of migrants streaming over the border have overwhelmed the city, which has admitted having to turn hundreds loose on its streets in recent months when its shelters have become too full.

Those with nowhere to stay have ended up camping outside the shelters on the streets of El Paso — where temperatures have recently dropped below freezing at night — wrapped in blankets and huddled in tents and cardboard boxes.

The small camp may have been started by legally admitted asylum seekers who had been processed by the US government, but they soon attracted others who had sneaked over the border illegally and were also seeking food and shelter. By eating and sleeping in one area, trash quickly piled up around them.

The city has responded by sending in sanitary crews regularly to clean up after them, worried that the waste and sanitary conditions could begin to spread infectious diseases.

...Since mid-December, migrants have been camping near the Greyhound bus station downtown as they tried to make their way onward in the US, initially because the city’s homeless shelters were full. On Dec. 16, the mayor of El Paso issued a disaster declaration and turned its convention center into a migrant shelter with 1,000 beds, which is still in use.

The sixth-largest city in Texas is currently ground zero for the migrant crisis — with more people crossing the border into the US in El Paso than anywhere else in the country.

..more