The Planning Commission for Escondido, a city just outside of San Diego, voted unanimously, by a 6-0 vote, to reject sheltering Central Americans caught illegally crossing the U.S. southern border.
A proposal to convert a vacant retirement home and create a 96-bed shelter for the illegal border crossers was opposed by many of the neighborhood residents, according to Reuters. Escondido now falls in lock step with Murrieta, California, about 30 miles north of Escondido, where protesters forced busses to make a U-turn and reroute back to the San Ysidro, California Border Patrol station, near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Breitbart News has reported that over 57,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Central America, have crossed the U.S. border since October, prompting government authorities to come up with temporary housing facilities. The effort to relocate them has caused a huge backlash in cities other than California as well. Attempts to transport the illegals to Oracle, Arizona, near Tucson also motivated huge anti-illegal immigration demonstrations.
“We are not going to tolerate illegals forced upon us,” Oracle protester Loren Woods said at a rally in mid-July. “We don’t know who they are. We don’t know their health conditions. We don’t know a doggone thing, because the federal government isn’t telling us anything,” protest organizer Robert Skiba said.
Nevertheless, there are supporters in favor of the Escondido proposal to provide shelter to the illegal immigrants. A not-for-profit advocacy group, Southwest Key, is expected to appeal the decision to the City Council. The legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego County, David Loy, said that the commission’s rejection of the proposal “appears to violate fair housing law and state and federal land-use laws.” According to Reuters, since 2006, the left-wing activist group has sued the city twice, maintaining that the city discriminates against Latinos.
Pro-Illegal Immigration rights activists held demonstrations prior to Tuesday’s vote, claiming that the commissioners are racist and not aligned with the community, which is almost 50% Latino.
Reuters also reported that Los Angeles-based activists on Tuesday lobbied President Obama to refrain from eliminating deportation protections granted to Central American child migrants by a 2008 anti-human trafficking law. The law guarantees that they can remain in the U.S. until deportation cases are finalized.
Breitbart News has reported that the cases often take years to be resolved. Before the latest surge of illegal immigrants crossing the border, the courts had over 30,000 pending deportation cases on the docket.
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