SAN DIEGO(With information from KPBS/City News Service)- SBCS, the organization that ran the Migrant Welcome Center in San Diego, announced the closure after its resources were stretched to the limit by an increase in the number of immigrants seeking assistance.
As a result, SBCS said it would close the center on Thursday, February 22, KPBS reported. This news didn’t please the partner agencies working with them. “We have been given very little notice to plan a response,” said Al Otro Lado executive director Erika Pinheiro.
Her organization has been providing family reunification services at the Migrant Welcome Center. “The Migrant Welcome Center was supposed to address the issue of street releases in San Diego County,” she said.
THEY ASK FOR TRANSPARENCY
Like Al Otro Lado, Immigrant Defenders Law Center is one of the groups that worked in the makeshift centers and at the site run by SBCS.
“What we really need is long-term planning,” said the organization’s managing attorney, Paulina Reyes-Perrariz.
San Diego County set aside $6 million in funding for SBCS to operate the welcome center over the past six months, but those funds have run out.
Reyes-Perrariz calls for financial responsibility and transparency. “We have not yet received information on how the money was spent,” she said.
Supervisor Jim Desmond, the only one who voted against additional funding for the Migrant Welcome Center in December 2023, said he is glad this is over. “It is not appropriate for San Diego County to continue paying the bill for a federal government matter,” he stressed.
FOR “A LIMITED TIME”
SBCS declined an interview, but in a statement, President and CEO Kathie Lembo said they knew the county funding was for “a limited time.”
The statement also said SBCS would work with the county and its partners to find a way to keep the center open to prevent “hundreds of people a day from being stranded in San Diego without the support they need to continue their journey.”
The nonprofit partner agencies said many of the people at the center came from open-air migrant camps near Jacumba and San Ysidro.
They said many unknowns exist about how migrants will be moved throughout San Diego County.
BETWEEN 600 AND 800 PEOPLE DAILY
According to an interview given by Kathie Lembo to the program 60 Minutes earlier this month, the Migrant Welcome Center received migrants once they were cleared by US Customs and Border Patrol, between 600 and 800 people daily.
Before the Center, the Border Patrol dropped off 800 and 900 people at transit stations daily, impacting neighboring communities.
From October 11, when the center opened its doors, until February 4, when this interview was given, it was known that only 0.05% of them had stayed in San Diego.
He also highlighted that while SBCS operated the Center, it operated seven days a week with about 55 employees, numerous volunteers, and at least a dozen partner non-governmental organizations.
A CALL TO THE FEDERATION
According to information from City News Service, Supervisor Jim Desmond called on the federation to address the issue.
The money would run out on Thursday the 22nd, and “we anticipate an increase in people sleeping in our airports and streets,” Desmond declared last Monday.
“The federal government must take immediate action to rectify this situation. The responsibility to address this crisis lies with the federation, and it must take decisive action to resolve it.”
Desmond said the money “should have gone toward addressing pressing issues within our county, such as homelessness and public safety.”
He added that the border situation between the United States and Mexico “has escalated to alarming levels, with more than 100,000 border encounters recorded in San Diego in the last five months alone.”
If the situation persists, the federal government “must take action, funding and operating temporary shelters or housing on federal property, facilitating the processing of people to their final destinations rather than releasing them onto our streets and transit centers,” Desmond said.