US

Border City Sets Up Tents For Migrants Released By Federal Officials

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A Texas border city has set up white tent structures in an empty parking lot to hold migrants released by federal officials, photographs taken on Tuesday show.

Officials in McAllen, Texas, set up the tents in an empty lot surrounded by a chain-linked fence topped with outward-facing barbed wire in the northern part of the city next to a church and adjacent to a gas station, according to a freelance reporter in the Rio Grande Valley. The McAllen City Commission voted to ask Hidalgo County to establish a temporary emergency shelter on the property for “the overwhelming number of immigrants stranded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” the City of McAllen said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday.

“The City Commission also instructed City staff to demand relief from the federal government for the alarming number of immigrants that are being released into the city of McAllen,” the City of McAllen said in a statement to the DCNF. “The Commission further instructed staff to assist local non-governmental organizations to swiftly expand their operations, including identifying additional locations for emergency shelter should the need arise.”

The @CityofMcAllen is putting up tents in an empty lot near the intersection of North 23rd Street and Buddy Owens Boulevard.

The tents will temporarily house migrants released by Border Patrol #rgv pic.twitter.com/FKWOtE3nMd

— Dave Hendricks (@dmhj) August 4, 2021

“Despite the City of McAllen and its community partners’ best efforts, the sheer number of immigrants being released into the city has become a crisis: a crisis the City of McAllen did not create and has proactively tried to avoid for seven years,” the city told the DCNF. “Now, with the drastic, unexpected increase of immigrants arriving to McAllen, the City Commission’s first priority is to protect the health and safety of the residents they serve.”

Border officials encountered more than 78,000 migrants in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley in July, where McAllen is located, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Around 210,000 migrants were encountered at the southern border in July, hitting the highest monthly total since 2000, according to preliminary government data.

Mexico stopped accepting migrant families who aren’t Mexican citizens who were apprehended in the U.S. and transported hundreds of miles to another location at the southern border to be expelled by U.S. officials, My RGV reported Saturday.

Subsequently, migrants filled federal detention centers in the Rio Grande Valley and some 7,000 migrants were held at Border Patrol facilities in the region, well over the 3,000 capacity limit, according to My RGV.