El Paso launches situational dashboard to track thousands of migrants

The city of El Paso launched a dashboard on Saturday to track the thousands of migrants it processes at its welcome center as migrant encounters at the border continue to rise. The dashboard will track both the migrants the city continues to serve and also those it sends north on buses to other locations. 

Since September, the city has served more than 14,900 migrants that have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, shows the newly installed “Migrant Situational Awareness Dashboard.” 

The dashboard displays the weekly U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters and releases of migrants, the migrants being processed at the migrant welcome centers, and the city resources being used to manage the crisis. 

“This tool provides transparency to our community on the current humanitarian crisis and how it is being handled daily,” Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said in a news release. 

“From day one, we have been open about how we are respectfully serving the migrants passing through our community and our substantial emergency efforts to deal with the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” he added.

El Paso has been encountering an average of 1,500 migrants every day, according to the city’s website. While the city has tried its best to accommodate the influx of people, the city’s shelter systems have reached maximum capacity and migrants have been left to fend for themselves on the street. 

As a result, the city of El Paso approved $2 million over the next 16 months to help bus migrants out of town to other cities.  

According to the dashboard, more than 8,000 of those migrants have been relocated to New York and around 2,300 have been sent to Chicago since the city launched its busing program on August 23.