Asylum-seeking families, recently released from a couple of South Texas immigrant detention centers, kept showing up at San Antonio's bus station at all hours of the night with basically no resources and no idea what to do next. That's why Raices, a San Antonio nonprofit that provides legal assistance and other help to refugees, created its emergency shelter program (called "Casa de Raices") for asylum seekers last year. Immigrants usually stay at the shelter for just up to 48 hours – enough time to decompress, sleep, have a warm meal, and figure out where to go next.
But then, on December 4, Raices sent out an unusual cry for help: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had dropped off nearly 500 refugee women and children, most of them fleeing raging violence in Central America, on San Antonio's doorstep. The Raices shelter was overwhelmed, and the organization had run out of places to house the refugees. Hundreds were shuttled to the San Antonio Mennonite Fellowship church in Southtown, where they slept in pews or on the floor or on donated mattresses, many of them wearing donated clothing. It was a chaotic scene for nearly three days as busloads of refugees kept coming. People compared it to a modern day, no-room-at-the-inn nativity scene.
Local attorneys, elected officials and immigrant rights advocates gathered on Saturday for a post-mortem, to discuss why the feds dumped hundreds of refugees here seemingly overnight, and what the episode reveals about the way the feds are handling the growing refugee crisis on the southwest border.
[For more of this story, written by Michael Barajas, go to http://www.sacurrent.com/the-d...an-antonios-doorstep]
Comments (0)