Karen Gleason
delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
For now, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that only law enforcement personnel can transport migrants is having little impact on the movement of those migrants out of Del Rio.
Groups of families lined up along a table outside the Val Verde Border Humanitarian
Coalition’s migrant processing center on Thursday morning, making sure their paperwork
was in order before boarding a waiting bus.
“This is an hour-by-hour situation now,” said Tiffany Burrow, operations director for the
coalition, during a break in the bustle of activity.
On Thursday, Burrow had sent out a notification the migrant processing center would be
closed on Friday.
“Gov. Abbott issued an executive order that anyone transporting migrants will have their
vehicle impounded. Transporting is what we do. If we can’t transport, then VVBHC is
unable to receive families. Holding positive thoughts that this will be resolved swiftly,”
Burrow wrote in the notification.
Abbott’s executive order sparked immediate concerns that hundreds of migrant families
would be stranded in Del Rio, which has served as a way station for migrants making
their way to other parts of the country.
Val Verde County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. on Friday said he, too, has sought
clarification from the state about the migrant transportation order, but said he has, as of 6
p.m. Friday, received no further word from the Texas Department of Public Safety or the
governor’s office.
When asked by the 830 Times if that meant “business as usual” for the moment, Owens
replied, “Yes.”
One migrant family that successfully left Del Rio on Friday was that of Juan Carlos
Funez.
Funez, his wife and three children, a 12-year-old boy and two daughters, ages 10 and
seven, huddled in the shade at the end of one of the gas pump islands outside the Stripes
convenience store, 1602 Veterans Blvd., on Friday morning.
Through a translator, Funez said he and his family are from Honduras and have been en
route to the United States for five months.
When asked how they obtained food and water on their journey, Funez replied persons
along the route had helped them, adding sometimes they would stop for weeks in an area,
and he would work to earn money so they could continue their trip. Funez said he has
worked mainly as an unskilled laborer, doing whatever kind of work was available.
Funez said he and his family are traveling to Houston, where they hope to meet family
members already living in the city.
Funez showed the 830 Times his tickets for a Greyhound bus leaving Stripes at 11:45
a.m. Friday.
When this reporter returned to the convenience store after the lunch hour, the Funez
family was gone.
