Volunteers form 'underground railroad' to house migrants dumped by ICE

By Marta Vázquez’s count, since Christmas she’s welcomed 306 newly arrived Central American parents and their children to spend the night at her house in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.

The families had all spent days in federal custody after presenting themselves at the southern border, and had nowhere to spend the night after immigration officials released them in Phoenix. They did not have bus tickets, money or functioning phones.

Over the last three months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released a reported 107,000 parents and children in Texas, Arizona and California. Shelters, churches and volunteers like Vázquez have stepped in to help these families get to their next destinations. Most are trying to join relatives and friends elsewhere in the US.

On a couple urgent occasions, Vázquez and her husband hosted more than 40 people in their home at once.

“I cannot leave them on the street,” said Vázquez, a 44-year-old Honduran immigrant and US Army veteran. “I just can't. I cannot leave a child in danger, hungry and cold.”

ICE's mass releases are a contrast to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy last spring, in which the US government sought to criminally prosecute parents for crossing the border and separated them from their children. Systematic family separations ended last June. Since then, a federal judge reaffirmed that immigration officials cannot detain families with children for more than 20 days.

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