El Paso, Texas ‘at a breaking point’ as migrant numbers skyrocket: mayor
El Paso has reached “a breaking point” as thousands of migrants continue to stream across Mexico’s border into the US — and it shared its pain Saturday by busing scores to the Big Apple, its mayor said.
“The city of El Paso only has so many resources, and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” said Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser at a briefing — where he noted more than 2,000 migrants are being taken into custody there every day.
He said the recent flood forced the town to charter five buses to take some of the asylum seekers to places such as New York, Chicago and Denver — Democratic strongholds and so-called “Sanctuary cities” that cater more to migrants.
“I think it’s really important to note that we have a broken immigration system,” Lesser said in a city where as recently as six weeks ago, about 350 to 400 people were crossing into it daily, a fraction of the current numbers. “It’s the same thing over and over again.”
He said El Paso is rushing to open a new emergency shelter itself to try to better handle the overwhelming influx, as its existing facilities burst at the seams.
The recent arrival of largely Venezuelan asylum seekers to the US is part of a larger swell of migrants who have been traveling dangerous routes on buses and cargo trains to Mexican border towns near San Diego, Calif., and the Texas cities of El Paso and Eagle Pass to enter the States.
Eagle Pass, a city of fewer than 30,000 residents, has been particularly inundated over the past week, with officials declaring a state of emergency after more than 11,000 asylum seekers arrived over just a few days last week.
Statistics published by The Post show that 1.23 million migrants have crossed the border seeking asylum in the past 11 months, according to data analyzed by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
Of those, 95,000 said they were heading to New York City — including another bus caravan dispatched from Texas on Friday by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The crisis has prompted a slew of political attacks on President Biden heading into the 2024 election.
But Abbott and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also have drawn criticism for shipping migrants to liberal cities such as New York and Sacramento.
Leeser said all of the migrants on the El Paso buses were going voluntarily to the cities of their choice.
He added that while Biden has been a good partner, the country’s overall immigration system is a disaster.
Many migrants from Venezuela lack transportation to their desired destinations, while El Paso’s current shelter houses only 400 people and must also be available to help the homeless, Lesser said.
Over the past 10 days, the city has worked with the US Border Patrol to provide shelter for 6,500 people, Leeser said. About two-thirds of those crossing into El Paso currently are single men, he said.
About 32% are families and just 2% are unaccompanied children.
With Post wires
