Border communities try to balance needs of residents and migrants amid humanitarian crisis

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Stuck between competing immigration policies and squarely in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, border communities try to balance the needs of residents and of migrants coming to the United States.

  Last night, the Supreme Court blocked a change that was expected to release a new surge of migration starting tomorrow. Well, late today, the Biden administration asked the court to end asylum restrictions, but not until sometime after Christmas.

  William Brangham has more about how one border city is preparing.

• William Brangham:

  In normal times, asylum seekers who make it to the U.S. border are entitled to a hearing.

  But, during the pandemic, an emergency rule called Title 42 allowed U.S. officials to immediately deport certain migrants. Last night, however, the Supreme Court put a hold on a lower court's decision to end those Title 42 expulsions. But that hold may only last for a few days.

  El Paso, Texas, sits along the Mexican border and is already struggling to care for the migrants that have come across.

  Mario D'Agostino is the deputy city manager for El Paso. And he joins me now.

  Deputy City Manager, thank you so much for being here.

  Your mayor declared a state of emergency over the weekend over the anticipated potential surge of people coming across the border. The temperatures are dropping overnight well below freezing, and people basically came with what they were wearing on their backs.

  Can you just tell us a little bit more about the people who are there and the difficulties you're having just caring for this current number?

• Mario D’Agostino, Deputy City Manager, El Paso, Texas:

  That's exactly it.

  And so the current numbers that we're seeing right now, it's difficult. Customs and Border Patrol is actually doing street releases, community releases. So, on a normal basis, they're already released to our NGOs, our churches, our local shelters, so that they can be housed while they wait for their transportation.

  With this extra flow that they have seen, they have had to also do street releases. And that's because there's just not enough bed availability. A lot of them need connectivity, so they can schedule their airline or their bus ride out of town. And we're actually offering them hotel space, so we can get them off the street and out of the cold.

  This current group that we're seeing, there's a good portion of them who don't want any — any aid or any care, that they will wait for their travels on their own. And so they're actually choosing to be outside. That's a difficulty for us, because we're just concerned for their safety, for everyone's safety.

  And so those resources came in, in both transportation, which is for long-distance transportation to get people to other locations that they want to go to. It was also for security just for those reasons, those people in the street, to protect them, protect the community. And we have a lot of Texas — Texas Guard and DPS agents coming in.

  The DPS is doing that security piece that I talked about, protecting the street. The Texas Guard, they're being staged here at this point in time. And, from our understanding, that's per the requests that we put in to assist with the sheltering and the feeding operations and what it's going to take if Title 42 does go away.

• William Brangham:

  Certainly, an enormous amount of challenges for a border community to be trying to deal with.

  Your mayor has said that, if Title 42 were to possibly go away, there's potentially 20,000 migrants who would like to make it across and come to El Paso. Given the current situation, could you handle those kinds of numbers if they came?

• Mario D’Agostino:

  And we're preparing. We're preparing as many bed spaces as we can get; 20,000 people is a large — I don't know many communities that could handle that overnight.

  The biggest issue for us, besides that, is the transportation. We just don't have the means to get them connected to other locations. So, that is the concern. That was the reason for declaring to make sure we can prepare, call for those additional resources, as we did with the state resources coming in.

  It actually activated the national Red Cross, so they're coming into to assist us for sheltering up to 10,000. And, right now, we're in the process of identifying facilities and setting up facilities for large — large sheltering operations.

• William Brangham:

  There has been a fair amount of criticism of the federal government's response to the border, I mean, Congress as well, but the federal government specifically.

  Do you think federal officials appreciate what you and other officials along the border are having to deal with?

• Mario D’Agostino:

  I would only imagine that it is appreciated. I can say that we constantly ask for change.

  And what I mean by that is, we understand there's migration, and it's going to happen, and there's legal ways for people to pass into the community. And we understand that. But there's got to be a more orderly fashion when we're seeing numbers of this size.

  And so, with that, that goes to any one of our requests. And we have done numerous. And it's from, is there any other way that Customs and Border Control — Border Patrol can decompress? And so what I mean by that is, we saw 1,600 to 1700 people released in El Paso every day last week.

  On top of those numbers, they were actually flying people out of El Paso. So Customs and Border Patrol were flying them to other locations to be released. The only mechanism they have in place is to fly them to other border communities, which we know they're going to feel the strain too.

  Title 42, it's going to affect all of us. So we ask if there's other options you can look at. Another thing we have brought up is, what is the possibility of making a change to where they can — these people coming into the community can be termed as from, instead of asylum seekers, but more of a refugee status?

  And this way, they could operationalize, as they did with the Fort Bliss here locally with the Afghan model. And so that gives us a place to house people, to get them acclimated, and to make sure that we can arrange travels in an orderly fashion from that point. So, we're asking for immediately — immediate things like that.

  But we know it's going to take policy. It's going to take more than just the U.S. working at this to try and work on this migration that we're seeing right now. Funding is not going to buy us out of it. It's going to take an effort larger than just El Paso.

• William Brangham:

  All right, Mario D'Agostino, deputy city manager of El Paso, Texas, thank you very much for your time.

• Mario D’Agostino:

  Thank you.