El Paso encountering up to 1,500 migrants a day in September

The U.S. Border Patrol said it has been encountering up to 1,500 migrants a day in El Paso during the month of September as the city continues to struggle with the large influx of migrants.

“We are up to 1,500 daily encounters in the month of September. It has not let up, on the contrary, we had been averaging 1,300 a day,” said U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Carlos A. Rivera. “We caught a break in that we are not experiencing the big groups of 200 to 400 at one shot. (And) when we have more places to turn these migrants over, that helps us with not doing provisional releases.”

Last week, the agency was forced to release more than 1,000 migrants onto the streets of El Paso after its Central Processing Center and nonprofit shelters were overcrowded. However, U.S. Border Patrol said it has not released any migrants on parole in the city since last Friday.

According to Border Patrol agents, most of the migrants coming through the city this month are “not amenable to the Title 42 expulsions,” a Trump administration policy that allows border agents to turn away migrants without hearing their cases at the border to prevent the further spread of Covid-19 within the country. 

Instead, most of the migrants are coming in as asylum seekers and cannot be removed from the country without processing their cases.

With the increasing number of migrants arriving in El Paso, the city’s Office of Emergency Management unveiled a processing site where released migrants with sponsors or financial resources are being routed to charter buses.

Last week, the El Paso city council voted 3-1 to contract Gogo Charters LLC to “transport migrants to other cities as needed.”