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 By a 6-0 vote, the Escondido Planning Commission found that the
proposal for converting a now-vacant retirement home into a 96-bed
shelter for young undocumented migrants was incompatible with the
neighborhood, many of whose residents opposed the plan.
Tuesday night's action in Escondido, a town about 20 miles north of
San Diego, comes as thousands of children from El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua have been streaming into Texas from Mexico
by way of human smuggling networks, fleeing extreme poverty, gangs
and drug violence in their home countries.
The influx has overwhelmed U.S. authorities who have been
hard-pressed to find temporary housing for the young migrants as
they await deportation proceedings.
U.S. law bars undocumented Central American children from being
summarily sent back to their home countries as they could be if they
were from Mexico or Canada.
The situation already has stirred a backlash in places such as
Oracle, Arizona, near Tucson, and Murrieta, California, about 30
miles north of Escondido, where some newly arrived migrants had been
slated to be transferred for initial processing.
RIGHT OF APPEAL
Supporters of the Escondido shelter plan, developed by the nonprofit
advocacy group Southwest Key at the behest of federal authorities,
have 10 days to appeal the decision to the City Council.
David Loy, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in
San Diego County, said the planning commission's action "appears to
violate fair housing law and state and federal land-use laws." The
ACLU has sued the city twice since 2006 over policies the group said
discriminated against Latinos.
About three-quarters of the 60 citizens who spoke at Tuesday's
boisterous hearing supported the shelter proposal. Most opponents
were residents of the neighborhood, which also includes a church and
a high school in the immediate vicinity.
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Earlier, immigration rights activists staged a march through the
city, branding the commission's initial, tentative vote against the
shelter last month as racist and out of step with a community where
nearly half the residents are Latino.
Not all California politicians have been unwelcoming to the
migrants. In Los Angeles last week, Mayor Eric Garcetti said he was
working with local charities in his city to find temporary shelter
for undocumented Central American youths.
Los Angeles-based activists on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama
not to strip away the protections offered to Central American child
migrants under a 2008 anti-human trafficking law, which guarantees
them the right to remain in the United States while deportation
cases are pending.
More than 52,000 children traveling alone from Central America have
been caught at the U.S.-Mexico border since October, double the
number from the same period the year before. Thousands more have
been detained with parents or other adults.
(Reporting by Marty Graham in Escondido, Additional reporting by
Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and by Daina Beth Solomon and Dan
Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric
Beech)
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