By Karen Gleason
A record high number of immigrants passed through the city’s Chihuahua Center during March.
A total of 2,070 asylum-seeking immigrants arrived, were processed and transported out of Del Rio from the center during March, according to Tiffany Burrow, director of operations for the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, the organization that operates the center.
Migrants released by the Del Rio Border Patrol now typically arrive at the Chihuahua Center mid- to late morning, Burrow said.
She spoke to the 830 Times about the ongoing operation at the Chihuahua Center during a brief lull in the activity there Wednesday morning.
“Momentarily, we’re going to be up and running again. This is the calm before the storm,” Burrow said, gesturing around the empty center.
Burrow said during those rare times when migrants aren’t at the center, volunteers work to catch up on housekeeping duties.
“It is a major catch-up. We clean; we restock. It’s a breather that’s always needed,” Burrow said.
She said the number of migrants who came into and left the center in March represents a new record from the time the center was first opened in 2019.
Burrow said a total of 106 migrants have been processed so far in April.
Migrants are transported to the center by van.
“We allow them an opportunity to contact their families and to secure their funding for transportation to their final destination. They’re here with us a short time, and in that interim, we assess their physical needs and sometimes their emotional needs, too,” Burrow said.
She said the children, especially, are “sometime traumatized by what they’ve been through.”
“So volunteers look to bring them out of their shells, encourage them to play, to be in the moment and just try to let them be kids again,” Burrow said.
Burrow said the vast number of migrants arrive at the center in family units.
“Families are the bulk, however, there are people who cross as a couple or as a family and for whatever reason, they are flagged and separated, and even though they started out as a family, we might receive them as a single individual,” Burrow said.
The migrants’ countries of origin have also shifted, she said.
“We are still seeing Haitians, but in the month of April, we have seen representation from countries we have never seen before, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone. So before, we were seeing people from central Africa, but we’re seeing a lot of people from the western African coast now,” Burrow said.
She added the center also continues to see immigrants from Venezuela and Cuba.
