Large groups of immigrants form bottleneck at Morelos Dam
Some asylum seekers wait 12 hours for processing - 13 On Your Side's Arlette Yousif reports
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - Asylum seekers are now flowing into the U.S. faster than Border Patrol agents can hope to process them.
More than 2,600 undocumented immigrants crossed into the Yuma Sector over the weekend. On Monday still more came into the area.
13 On Your Sides' Arlette Yousif encountered a group of at least 100 near the Morelos Dam. Some had been waiting as long as 12 hours for Border Patrol to process them.
One local man is doing what he can to help the immigrants.
"Our humanitarian coalition is here to, you know, provide the simple necessities of water, a snack… as they wait to be processed, picked up, as you may say by Border Patrol," says Arizona California Humanitarian Coalition Member Fernando Quiroz.
Quiroz says helping these people is something that must be done.
"I get teary-eyed. I get emotional. Especially if they’re a woman, the journey that they took… the things that they had to go through," explains Quiroz.
Dayami, an immigrant from Cuba, is just one of thousands of women making the trek to the U.S. Her journey has been particularly long. From her home island off the tip of Florida, she traveled to Guyana, then on to Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia before arriving in Yuma with two of her teenage children.
"It's been more than a year since I left my country, little by little from country to country to be able to continue working almost like a slave to gather the money and keep jumping until I get there," she says.
She hopes to be reunited with her daughter who already lives in the U.S.
"We plan to go to Kentucky so we can gather as a family," Dayami explains.
A Border Patrol agent showed up after about two hours after Yousif met up with the group. She explained to the group that more agents will be assigned to the area to help with processing.