When seven newly arrived migrants were released from government custody with nowhere to stay the night, an emergency shelter in the small border city of San Benito, Tx., answered the call, sending a volunteer to make his fifth such pickup of the day from nearby Brownsville. The shelter, La Posada Providencia, had hot food waiting, Several of the men, who had come from Cuba and Nicaragua, collapsed on cots fitted with clean sheets and pillows. The volunteer would drive them to the airport the next morning, and they would then continue their journey northward. As the U.S. experiences the largest wave of migration at the southern border in decades, it is increasingly relying on an informal pipeline of shelters and other way stations to house and feed migrants who are allowed to stay on a temporary basis.
Many of them are seeking asylum in a wait that could potentially last for years — for their immigration court proceedings, the New York Times reports. From the time President Biden took office through April, the government has admitted about a quarter of the undocumented migrants apprehended at the southwestern border, or about 700,000 out of 2.7 million. The rest have been swiftly expelled under an emergency public health order related to the pandemic, or under another legal authority. On Friday, a federal judge ordered that the rule, which was supposed to be lifted on Monday, remain in place; the administration said it would appeal. Already, many of the thousands of migrants crossing each day are being let in. Of the record 234,088 migrants who arrived in April, nearly half were released into the U.S. for various reasons, including humanitarian exceptions to the public health order and insufficient detention space.