By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
The past month has been a rollercoaster of numbers at the migrant processing center in south Del Rio.
Tiffany Burrow, director of operations at the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition’s migrant processing center, sited in the Chihuahua Neighborhood Facility off Las Vacas Street, spoke to the 830 Times recently about the numbers she and the center’s volunteers have been seeing.
“We’re still seeing a lot of ups and downs as far as numbers go. This week especially (mid-June). It’s been very unpredictable, and there’s not been a lot of consistency,” Burrow said.
Burrow said the fluctuating numbers make it more difficult to anticipate staffing needs and other resources.
“It makes planning more difficult logistically, food, transportation. Everyone purchases their own tickets, but we need to have the right number of transportation options available,” she said.
Asked if there was anything the center needed from the community, Burrow said, “It’s always a reiteration of letting everyone know that the people who come through here all purchase their own tickets. We are not providing them. This issue comes up again and again.
“It is not tax-based dollars that are funding this operation. This is supported through partnerships and private donors,” Burrow added.
Burrow emphasized the tickets for transportation out of Del Rio are bought either by the migrants themselves using money they are carrying with them or by family members or sponsors already living in the United States.
Burrow said the migrants she and her volunteers are seeing now are coming mostly from the Western Hemisphere.
“The top countries we are seeing are Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and then you have a sprinkling of South American countries. For a while there, we were seeing a lot of people from West Africa, but that seems to have slowed down a bit. We haven’t seen any Haitians in about six weeks,” she said.
Burrow said she and the center volunteers are taking the workflow one day at a time.
“Although I am a planner, this has been a day-by-day experience. For example, Comstock has had zero people. We receive from several different (Border Patrol) stations that are under the Del Rio Sector, and Comstock has been at zero, but today they’re at 90, so it’s up and down, and it’s hard to know what’s coming next,” Burrow said.
Burrow said she is aware that Title 42 – a policy enacted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to expel migrants more rapidly – remains in place, adding she knows of no change to take place regarding it in the near future. If that changes, she said, she and her volunteers will deal with the increased numbers.
“Either way, whatever it is, it is. We’re not going to worry about it,” she said.
Burrow said she has been excited to see much support from out-of-town volunteers.
“They give our local volunteers a bit of a respite, a bit of a break, giving them a chance to maybe go on vacation or spend some time at home with their families, their children. Our local volunteers are tremendous and I’m so grateful for their support,” Burrow said.
She also said more improvements have been made at the center to help migrants waiting for transportation to deal with Del Rio’s long, hot summer.
“We put in a misting system (above an outside waiting area), and it brings down the temperature by at least 10 degrees,” she said.
“We have also ordered more tables, because we don’t have enough, and we’re working getting more umbrellas (for the tables), which help, but not like the misting system. If there were a way to make the area in front of the center more shaded, that would be great,” she said.
“The temperatures have really been difficult. We’ve seen a couple of medical cases where we’ve had to call the ambulance for emergency assistance, and they’ve all been heat-related. I’m afraid that those are just the beginning, because this heat’s not going to go away any time soon,” Burrow said.
Burrow said the migrant processing center here is only a very small part of a much larger picture.
“I am just as concerned as the next person about the drug-trafficking, the huge numbers of unaccompanied minors, the cartels that are running things. What we’re doing here is such a small part of the puzzle, and there’s such a bigger picture, and I’m concerned about that bigger picture as well. There isn’t much focus on how dangerous this is, how many deaths there are. This is a small demographic that falls into the larger scheme of things,” Burrow said.
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