NBC’s Ainsley: Migrants Describe No ‘Interactions with Authorities’ at Border – ‘They Just Walked Right In’

NBC News homeland security correspondent Julia Ainsley said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that she spoke with migrants in El Paso, Texas on Tuesday, who said they crossed the southern border without “any interaction with U.S. immigration authorities.”

Ainsley said, “What we are seeing here is a city that is overwhelmed and in chaos. These families behind me here. These are some of the lucky ones who were inside a shelter, but a lot of shelters are overwhelmed. I just came from the streets this morning. There are hundreds of people sleeping in the airports, at bus stations, on the streets. And it’s actually really cold here. It was 33 degrees, and we woke up this morning. Migrants were huddling together under blankets for warmth because even though Title 42 hasn’t lifted yet, so many people have been able to come across. Not every nationality gets expelled. But we just spoke to people at this shelter here. Ruben Garcia, who runs this shelter, who says, look, already there are people sleeping on the streets. The numbers that will be sleeping on the streets if Title 42 lists is unfathomable, and he says the federal government will have to do more.”

Mitchell said, “If Title 42 is lifted, officials say there’ll be a record number of 10,000 unauthorized border crossings per day. So what is the long-term solution? I mean, you’ve talked to officials down there that they’ve ramped up, but they can’t possibly handle that.”

Ainsley said, “That’s right. It’s really just a numbers game, Andrea. And for a while, yes, we’ve been looking at maybe 10,000 a day across the border, but I think it might even be higher than that now that I’ve been able to get down on the ground and talk to people. We’re talking about just here in El Paso numbers could be as high as 5 to 6,000 a day. This is just one small section of the border. So they’re worried that they could be completely overwhelmed and not be able to meet people’s basic human needs. Officials have ramped up processing, but we were even able to see, as of last night, a lot of migrants just crossing, and migrants I spoke to this morning saying they haven’t had any interaction with U.S. immigration authorities. They just walked right in.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN