Morelos Dam still hotspot for undocumented immigrants
Basic necessities provided to undocumented immigrants - 13 On Your Side's Arlette Yousif reports
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA/KECY) - Activity at the border continues, and with some areas of the border wall open to walk through… it attracts more traffic.
The Morelos Dam area has hundreds of undocumented immigrants walking in each day. The majority of them wait on American soil for border patrol agents to pick them up.
Arizona California Humanitarian Coalition member Fernando Quiroz says border patrol agents have been covering a lot of ground with extra help from other sectors.
But he says the coalition still sees large groups of undocumented immigrants at the border.
"Some days, we can go out there and in one of our, what we call drop sites, aid sites, can be anywhere from 20 to 150 individuals per day. Some days are more and some days are less," says Arizona California Humanitarian Coalition Member Fernando Quiroz
Quiroz says depending on the day, border patrol agents have been showing up sooner, even getting to the border with buses before large groups arrive because they are seen in the distance.
Other days, however, undocumented immigrants could be waiting at the border for several hours before agents arrive.
"So we try to provide the simple basic necessities of these asylum seekers as they enter into the U.S. and are waiting there to be processed and picked up by border patrol," explains Quiroz.
The coalition is at main hotspots like the Morelos Dam throughout the day providing water, snacks, baby food, blankets, jackets, and even masks to undocumented immigrants.
"It’s like the pandemic, really. I mean, we’ve gotten used to the situation and I think right now we deal with it differently than we did in the beginning," says Yuma County Board of Supervisors Chairman Tony Reyes.
Chairman Reyes says while Yuma County does provide certain items like COVID tests to organizations dealing with border issues, it is not using much, if any, extra funds for it.
He says these are items provided to the county by the federal government and the county allocates resources accordingly.
"We should continue to apply pressure on Congress so they can actually come up with a solution," explains Reyes.
Even with the extra help Yuma Sector Border Patrol is receiving, sometimes it still takes longer to pick up and process undocumented immigrants, especially when large groups are apprehended.
