New migrant processing center opened in Texas border city
Los Angeles, Jan 11 (EFE).- The US Customs and Border Protection agency on Wednesday announced the opening of a new migrant processing center in El Paso, Texas, a border city that recently has experienced a sharp increase in asylum seekers.
The main purpose of the facility is to “safely and expeditiously process individuals in US Border Patrol custody,” the CBP said in a statement.
The new facility, which will have the capacity to process 1,000 recently arrived migrants per day, will help reduce the workload at the El Paso Sector US Border Patrol Central Processing Center, which was opened at Hondo Pass in El Paso in the fall of 2020 and processes more than 1,000 migrants daily.
The new temporary processing facility is weather-proof, climate-controlled and is expected to provide recently arrived migrants with “ample areas for eating, sleeping and personal hygiene,” the CBP said.
The opening of the new center comes just days after President Joe Biden visited El Paso last Sunday along with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and several Democratic lawmakers.
Biden, who subsequently traveled on to Mexico City for the North American Leaders’ Summit, had not visited the border since taking office as president in January 2021.
While en route to El Paso, Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One that he anticipated that the new migrant processing facility in that border city would open some time this week.
He also explained that 100 additional Border Patrol agents had been deployed to El Paso to respond to the “acute challenge” there. EFE
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