Illegal migrants mixing with admitted asylum seekers, causing chaos in El Paso

Two thousand illegal immigrants have infiltrated El Paso in Texas and are causing a major headache for authorities, sources told The Post Tuesday.

El Paso is once again under siege as hundreds of hopeful migrants surrender at the border daily.

Most are ejected back to Mexico after a few days being processed in Customs and Border Protection custody, but a few hundred a day are being admitted to pursue asylum claims or given Temporary Protected Status and allowed to stay in the US.

Their ranks are being infiltrated by illegal immigrants who have sneaked over the border, often aided by cartels, and started to mingle among them.

Former El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told The Post: “My biggest concern now is about 2,000 migrants are running around El Paso undocumented — meaning they were never processed. They slipped in. And they can’t be sent or transported out of town.” 

Migrants who have been given papers by authorities are quickly moved out of El Paso toward their final destinations in the US.

The city has federal funding which they are planning to use to pay for buses to transport people, but have yet to start the program.

However, the presence of illegal aliens complicates matters.

Transporting them is illegal and if they were moved using federal funds, that money would immediately be stripped from the city.

This leaves them stuck in El Paso taking up badly needed resources.

Margo explained how the Red Cross is set to start operating in the city, and how such charities, non-governmental and religious organizations often do not ask questions such as immigration status of the people they shelter and provide for.

“Some of the [undocumented] are going to churches, some of them are going to the NGOs, and CBP are not going to raid the churches.”

Pictures from El Paso taken by The Post Monday showed desperate migrants spilling out onto the streets and erecting camps there, while sources said chicken pox and bed bugs have been spreading across the town.

Border Patrol had been sending migrants to other parts of the border to be processed and ejected such as Laredo, Tucson and San Diego. However, those crossings are now also full and unable to take any more people, leaving El Paso to deal with most of the people who hand themselves in at the border crossing – currently over 1,000 a day. That number is set to explode when Title 42 ends on May 11, when Texas officials warn the Southern border could see up to 13,000 people crossing per day.  

Officials in the city say they are working on increasing their ability to rapidly screen migrants and have requested more help from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to do so.

“CBP [in El Paso] has about 5,000 people that they’re holding, but they’re only releasing about 600 a day through processing, but they’re going to start that rapid processing that they did when I was mayor,” added Margo.

The city is also expected to re-start busing migrants, a program it had previously funded itself, sending 14,000 people out of the city. News of more immigrant buses was this week greeted with exasperation from leaders in New York City and Chicago, who claim they are already overwhelmed by the number arriving in their cities.

Margo added: “It looks like they’re going to pick it up [busing]. CBP will probably be advocating the transportation issue, which is what they did before.

“Most of the time, [migrants are] going to or sent to other parts of the United States, which is why immigration reform is national problem, not a border problem.”