Karen Gleason
Growing numbers of migrants seeking asylum in the United States are once again being released in Del Rio, and Val Verde County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. said he and other local officials are monitoring the evolving situation.
Owens said he met Tuesday with Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection officials about the migrant releases.
“The bottom line is that we’re just not set up for this. Once again, this should not be our problem,” Owens said.
Owens said although he is frustrated, he and the other local officials don’t blame Border Patrol or Customs and Border Protection officials here.
“They’re just following directives,” he said.
Owens said the local releases have increased over the past few days.
“The situation is, is that they (Border Patrol) are picking them up and bringing them in, and they started releasing them. It started out as a small trickle, 19, 20, 30 a day. They released some Tuesday, and they released some this morning (Wednesday),” Owens said.
“The bottom line is that they’re going to release them. That’s what we were told,” the county judge said.
He said the migrants being released are mostly in family groups.
“Yesterday, the conversation we had with the Border Patrol was that they were going to open the door because they were told not to use federal funds to take them to the Chihuahua Center to be processed and get some help to get out of our community,” Owens said.
He said on Wednesday, though, Border Patrol officials called him and told him they would be able to transport the released migrants to the Chihuahua Neighborhood Facility.
Owens said the neighborhood facility has never closed since it was opened to deal with the migrant crisis in the spring of 2019.
