The San Diego Convention Center in California, famous for its international Comic-Con, will be used to house unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants.
On March 22, San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chairman Nathan Fletcher and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria issued a joint statement that they will respond to a request from incoming federal health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra that the San Diego Convention Center (Convention Center) be used to house The statement said the Convention Center is a temporary shelter for unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants.
The temporary shelter at the Convention Center will operate for about three months and will accept unaccompanied illegal immigrant children under the age of 17, the statement said.
The shelter will provide Food, medical care and sleeping and bathing areas for the children, as well as a temporary playground in an outdoor area. Each child is expected to stay at the shelter for one month pending the procedures necessary to be reunited with their loved ones in the United States or to be adopted.
The San Diego Convention Center has been closed since March of last year due to California’s Epidemic prevention order. It was later used as a shelter for the homeless during the Communist China virus (COVID-19) epidemic, taking in more than 4,000 people, most of whom had been placed in permanent and long-term housing prior to that. The more than 600 people who remain will be transferred to other homeless shelters within the city of San Diego beginning this week, according to San Diego’s ABC10 television.
“When HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra asked us to help house some of the unaccompanied minors at the border, we knew it was something we should do,” Fletch and Gloria wrote in a joint statement. “The county and city will support this federally funded effort by providing services for these vulnerable children who have come to the United States seeking safety.”
The temporary shelters will be funded by the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Refugee Resettlement Program. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the San Diego Convention Center will also provide assistance to the program.
Jewish Family Service of San Diego, a civic organization that assists refugees at the border, is actively recruiting staff and volunteers.
Currently, the number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has skyrocketed, with CBS8 television reporting that in February, the U.S.-Mexico border arrested more than 9,400 unaccompanied minors, the highest number ever for the same period. With recent arrests averaging more than 500 unaccompanied minors per day, the numbers for March are expected to be higher than February.
On March 21, the U.S. government had taken in 15,500 unaccompanied minors, and more than 5,000 children were in the custody of the Border Patrol. Unaccompanied children now spend an average of 136 hours in Border Patrol custody, far more than the 72 hours required by law, because there are not enough places to take them.
The Department of Health and Human Services is currently seeking to open more shelters to house these children. The Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, has been converted to an emergency shelter to accommodate unaccompanied minors awaiting placement.
“President Biden‘s reckless open borders policy has created a border crisis and a surge in drug smuggling, and these shelters are a direct result (of his policy),” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a recent address to the public. “The administration has yet to give Texans the explanation they deserve,” he said.
The move comes after the Biden Administration reversed a series of Trump administration immigration policies, including the revocation of the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) that kept illegal immigrants in Mexico. the MPP had allowed illegal immigrants to wait with their children in Mexico for their cases to go to trial after filing applications for political asylum.
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