Federal agencies coping with an influx of young immigrants along the Texas border are planning to send some family groups to Southern California for processing, according to news reports.
10News reported Saturday that a plane with immigrants from Central America is expected to land in San Diego Tuesday afternoon. The group would be bused to a Border Patrol facility Murrieta, where they would be screened.
Federal agencies are dealing with a doubling in the number of immigrant children arriving alone at the southwest border. Agents apprehended 52,193 unaccompanied children aged 17 and under along the border between October 1, 2013, and June 15 this year, nearly double the number arriving during the same period a year previously. Most of the children are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama declared the surge in immigrant children an “urgent humanitarian situation,” and directed federal agencies to coordinate a response.
On Friday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in San Diego issued a statement saying that agencies were making “arrangements to transport adults with children from the Rio Grande Valley to the Laredo and El Paso Sectors in Texas and San Diego and El Centro Sectors in California.”
The statement did not provide specifics on dates and numbers, but noted that the transfer “will allow the U.S. Border Patrol in less congested areas to assist in processing family units from South Texas where we are seeing an influx of migrants crossing the border…Once the family groups arrive in the sector, CBP will assist with processing the apprehended immigrants by interviewing and processing them for removal.”
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