Three Homeland Security buses carrying undocumented immigrant children and families in Southern California were rerouted Tuesday after a wall of American flag-waving protestors blocked the group from reaching a San Diego processing center, the Associated Press reported. The buses, with 140 people on board, were eventually taken to a border stated in San Ysidro.
The standoff at Murrieta Border Patrol station occurred after residents were urged by Mayor Alan Long to protest the decision of transferring Central American migrants into California as a way to ease overcrowded facilities along the Texas-Mexico border, said Ron Zermeno of the National Border Patrol Council.
Angry protesters held U.S. flags, while others held signs reading "stop illegal immigration," and "illegals out!" "We can't start taking care of others if we can't take care of our own," protester Nancy Greyson, 60, of Murrieta, told the Desert Sun newspaper.
Juan Silva, 27, a welder in Chula Vista, thought officials were transporting drug traffickers before he found out that the buses were carrying migrant families. "I don't think people in that town should be against little kids," he said about the protesters in Murrieta. "We're not talking about rapists. We're talking about human beings. How would they feel if it was their kids?"
Many of the immigrants, traveling from South Texas to San Diego, had been detained while fleeing violence and extortion from gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
At least 136 immigrants were fed and screened after reaching the Murrieta facility, Zermeno told CNN. "Ten children among the group were taken to local hospitals, though it's unclear why. Seven children were diagnosed with active scabies, an itchy and highly contagious skin disease. Those children are being kept separate from the others at the San Ysidro station, he said. An additional 17 immigrants were taken to the Boulevard station in eastern San Diego County." After the migrants are processed and await deportation proceedings, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will decide who can be released.
"Earlier in the day, a chartered plane landed in San Diego with 136 migrants on board, according to a federal Department of Homeland Security official who was not authorized to be named when speaking on the issue," according to the AP. "It was the first flight planned for California under the federal government's effort to ease the crunch in the Rio Grande Valley and deal with the flood of Central American children and families fleeing to the United States."
In what President Obama has called a humanitarian crisis, the U.S. government is struggling to process and accommodate more than 52,000 unaccompanied children who have been detained since October.
