For
months, a migrant-services center blocks from the Alamo in downtown San
Antonio has been packed with Central American families who have crossed
the border in record-breaking numbers.
Migrants
from around the world have been known to cross the southwest border,
but the vast majority are those from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador
and Mexico. African migrants have shown up at the border in the past,
but only in small numbers, making the sudden arrival of more than 700
all the more surprising to Border Patrol officials.
Read more: A New Migrant Surge at the Border, This One From Central Africa - The New York Times
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But
in recent days, hundreds of migrants from another part of the world
have caused city officials already busy with one immigrant surge to
scramble on a new and unexpected one. Men, women and children from
central Africa — mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola
— are showing up at the United States’ southwest border after embarking
on a dangerous, monthslong journey.
Their
arrival at the border and at two cities more than 2,100 miles apart —
San Antonio and Portland, Me. — has surprised and puzzled immigration
authorities and overwhelmed local officials and nonprofit groups. The
surge has prompted Portland to turn its basketball arena into an
emergency shelter and depleted assistance funds meant for other groups.
Officials in both cities have had to reassure the public that fears of
an Ebola outbreak were unfounded while also pleading for volunteer
interpreters who speak French and Portuguese.
In
San Antonio, the city-run Migrant Resource Center has assisted about
300 African migrants who were apprehended at the border and released by
the authorities since June 4.
Those 300 are just a portion of the
overall numbers. Since October 2018, more than 700 migrants from Africa
have been apprehended at what has become their main point of entry, the
Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, a largely rural stretch of Texas border
that is nearly 200 miles west of San Antonio.
From fiscal years
2007 to 2018, a total of 25 migrants from Congo and Angola were arrested
and taken into custody in the Border Patrol’s nine sectors on the
southern border, according to agency data.
Many
come with horrific stories of government-sanctioned violence at home
and treacherous conditions on their long journeys through South and
Central America.
Read more: A New Migrant Surge at the Border, This One From Central Africa - The New York Times
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