Border Patrol erects more tents in the Rio Grande Valley to house asylum seekers as surge continues

The agency said Friday that the Rio Grande Valley sector is holding an average of 8,000 migrants each day.

by Julián Aguilar, Texas Tribune


Just two weeks after U.S. Border Patrol agents began housing asylum-seeking migrants in a new tent facility in Donna, the agency announced Friday it had reached capacity and the agency will construct four additional temporary facilities in two other Rio Grande Valley cities.

The facility in Donna was completed the first week of May and can hold 500 undocumented immigrants after they are apprehended or turn themselves into Border Patrol officials.

But in a new release Friday, the agency said agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector had 8,000 migrants in custody, a result of the continued “waves of migrants fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.” The additional structures are being built at Border Patrol stations in McAllen and Rio Grande City.

“The longer illegal aliens remain in custody, the harder it can become to sustain our operations but housing the migrants in these tents is the default solution,” Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said in a statement. “This is the reality of what happens when we simply cannot handle the influx of migrants arriving.”

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/17/south-texas-border-patrol-erecting-more-tents-hold-asylum-seekers/