San Diego Declares Humanitarian Crisis as Federal Government Drops Thousands of Migrants on Streets

The San Diego board of supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to declare a humanitarian crisis as thousands of illegal immigrants flooded into the city, courtesy of the federal government.

More than 8,100 migrants have arrived in the area in the last two weeks, the San Diego Union Tribune reported, citing county officials. Many of the migrants have been dropped off on the streets of San Diego by the U.S. government, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Supervisor Jim Desmond and Chair Nora Vargas proposed the declaration, which would authorize the county to petition the federal government for more funding to address the untenable situation. The county’s office of immigrant and refugee affairs will now send a letter asking for more federal assistance for the local organizations combatting the crisis.

Many representatives of aid groups spoke at the Tuesday board of supervisors meeting, calling on the officials to secure a federal response.

“These releases occur with little direction and minimal resources, leaving local communities grappling with an increasingly untenable situation,” Desmond said in a statement. “While we are a community that values compassion and empathy, we must also acknowledge the practical limits of our capacity to meet the needs of those who arrive in our region.”

Desmond said the county has been diverting resources away from the local homeless population to provide help to the migrants

“If you want us to fund this response, what program would you have us take that money from?” he asked at the board of supervisors’ Tuesday meeting, according to the Journal.

Shelters in the region are overwhelmed by migrants seeking accommodations, forcing immigration agents to drop migrants off on the streets of San Diego, including bus stops and train stations.

Border Patrol told the outlet that agents try to coordinate releases with aid groups and only leave migrants at bus stops and train stations when the shelters are at capacity or strapped for resources. The San Diego aid center has signs posted outside in Spanish, Urdu, Mandarin, French, Turkish and Arabic telling migrants they can’t stay overnight.

“While Supervisor Desmond and I may have fundamentally different views on immigration policy, we can both agree on one thing, and that is that this county urgently needs federal resources,” Vargas said.

Greg Anglea, chief executive of the local aid group Interfaith Community Services, requested more money for the migrants at the Tuesday meeting.

“We cannot wait and we cannot allow the need for federal funding to obviate our requirement…for the public health needs and the safety concerns of individuals in our community, young men and women being dropped off in our community,” he said.

Migrants have been released into cities across the country, including ones closer to the border in Texas but also northeastern locales such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. New York City has struggled to make room for roughly 100,000 migrants since the spring of 2022, having no choice but to house them in repurposed hotels, psychiatric centers, and other shelters across the five boroughs and in neighboring suburbs.

San Diego’s struggle comes amid the Biden administration granting temporary legal status to nearly half-a-million illegal immigrants from Venezuela so they can pursue work. Venezuelan migrants have accounted for a large portion of those who have illegally crossed the border in recent years.