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Central American migrants sent to California despite backlash
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[July 03, 2014]
By Dana Feldman and Marty Graham
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Residents of a
Southern California town confronted their mayor on Wednesday over the
arrival of Central American migrants for processing after they slipped
across the Mexico border into Texas, extending an influx that has
swamped authorities there.
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Families and unaccompanied minors have been fleeing strife-torn
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and streaming by the thousands
over the U.S.-Mexico frontier with the help of human smuggling
rings.
Most have shown up in Texas, swamping detention and reception
centers there and leading U.S. immigration authorities to set up
overflow sites in California and other states in the Southwest to
help screen and manage the influx.
Dozens more migrants were shipped to California for processing on
Wednesday, a day after protesters blocked buses full of Central
American families bound for a Border Patrol station north of San
Diego.
Later on Wednesday at least 1,000 residents of Murrieta near San
Diego crammed into a town hall meeting to protest over hundreds of
migrants the federal government aims to provisionally accommodate in
the San Diego suburb.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Jul/03/images/ads/current/job-hunt_sda.png) Protesters on Tuesday had blocked three buses carrying the first
group of 140 migrants headed to Murrieta, forcing the caravan to
turn around and head to another Border Patrol station in San Diego
for processing there instead.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in an interview with
MSNBC, said he found television images of that demonstration "very
disturbing" to watch.
"Because of the recent influx of kids and families crossing the
border in the Rio Grande sector, our processing capability (there)
is full and we've had to go to other places in the Southwest simply
to process these people," Johnson said.
"So when someone interrupts the ability of the border patrol to
process a migrant, you're preventing us from conducting basic health
screening and the basic background checks on who these people are,"
he said.
'SEND WASHINGTON A BILL'
Immigration officials said most of the families headed for
California were likely to be released under limited supervision to
await deportation. Many would to be placed with relatives or friends
or in temporary housing provided by charity groups.
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On Wednesday, border protection officials confirmed that a separate
group of undocumented migrant families with children were sent to a
processing center in El Centro, California, a desert community about
100 miles (160 km) east of San Diego.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency spokeswoman Virginia Kice
said authorities were being especially careful to avoid disclosing
the whereabouts of the detainees "so that mobs can't go down and
root out those people".
At the town hall meeting in Murrieta, Mayor Alan Long told the angry
throng that he had been advised by U.S. officials to expect another
group of about 140 immigrants every three days for several weeks.
He blamed federal officials for the influx, saying that he intended
to "send Washington a big fat bill" for expenses.
Residents filled the meeting hall to capacity and spilled out into a
parking lot, carrying signs with slogans like "Illegals today,
Jihadists with Nukes tomorrow!!".
A man scuffled with police after they stopped him walking into the
meeting draped with a flag. The meeting adjourned at about 11 p.m.
local time and residents left without incident.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Jul/03/images/ads/current/businesscardlookat.png)
(Writing and additional reporting from Los Angeles by Steve Gorman
and Dan Whitcomb, and from Seattle by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by
Mark Heinrich)
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