U.S. Customs and Border Protection contractors are erecting soft-sided detention centers to expand migrant processing capabilities in the nation’s busiest border sector. Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 106,000 migrants during the first two months of the new fiscal year.
El Paso Sector officials report the agency is building a soft-sided facility on land acquired by the Department of Homeland Security on Highway 54 in El Paso. The facility is expected to increase the sector’s migrant processing capabilities and will be able to hold an additional 1,000 migrants while they are being processed for release or return under immigration laws.
‘The addition of temporary processing facilities such as this one increases CBP’s capacity to safely take noncitizens into custody and place them into immigration proceedings,” CBP officials said in a written statement provided to Breitbart Texas on Thursday. “This is part of the agency’s response efforts regarding increased migrant encounters in the El Paso area, along with surging additional personnel and providing funding to local partners.”
The current centralized processing center in El Paso is meant to hold about 3,000 migrants, Breitbart Texas reported on December 12. At that time, the processing center was well above capacity as it held more than 5,000 migrants.
Border Patrol officials released increasing numbers of migrants to NGOs and onto the streets of El Paso. The action overwhelmed local shelters and city officials as the number of weekly releases of migrants into El Paso exceeded 10,000 during the week before Christmas, according to the Migrant Crisis Dashboard published by the City of El Paso. The release of these migrants forced El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser to declare a state of disaster on December 18.
Since the disaster declaration by the city, federal and state officials began removing migrants from the El Paso Sector.
Department of Homeland Security officials removed approximately 10,000 migrants from El Paso during the week ending on December 19. More than 3,400 of those migrants were expelled to Mexico under the current Title 42 program or removed to their countries of origin by ICE expedited removal flights. The remaining migrants, approximately 6,000, were moved from the El Paso Border Patrol Sectors to other sectors to be processed under what the agency calls “lateral decompression.”
The Texas Division of Emergency Management also began busing migrants released by Border Patrol to Washington D.C. and other locations in the northern United States.
Texas National Guard soldiers deployed to El Paso under Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star began building razor-wire fencing along frequent border crossing areas in the city. By the end of the Christmas holiday weekend, Guardsmen built approximately two miles of the triple-layer concertino wire fencing.
Texas Division of Emergency Management contractors also began stacking shipping containers along the El Paso border to deter border crossings.
Despite the efforts of federal, state, and local officials, large groups of migrants woke up Christmas morning on the streets of El Paso as temperatures fell into the 20s. City officials placed buses near migrant encampments to serve as warming stations for those who either refused to go to shelters or were ineligible for federally funded shelters.
Biden administration policies prohibit migrants who crossed the border and were not apprehended and processed by Border Patrol agents from being admitted to federally funded shelters, Breitbart Texas reported. Most of the migrants in this category are Venezuelans who are still subject to expulsion from the U.S. under Title 42.
The new soft-sided processing facility is expected to come online sometime in January, CBP officials told Breitbart Texas.
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