Karen Gleason
Despite ongoing challenges and a few unforeseen roadblocks, volunteers with the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition (VVBHC) continue to help migrants leave Del Rio as quickly as possible.
The 830 Times visited VVBHC’s migrant processing center, located in the city of Del Rio’s Chihuahua Neighborhood Facility at 1401 Las Vacas St., on Tuesday afternoon.
The center was a whirlwind of activity.
“Hurry! Hurry! The bus leaves in a few minutes!”
VVBHC volunteer Maria Lopez called and gestured to a small group of Haitians gathering their meager belongings inside the processing center’s large common room.
A man and a woman corralled a toddler playing with donated toys inside the common room, stuffed water bottles and a manila envelope containing their documents into a backpack and trotted toward the bus waiting outside the center.Â
After the bus pulled away, Tiffany Burrow, VVBHC director of operations, spoke about the recent operations at the center.
Burrow said, “It’s been challenging, these last couple of days. We continue to receive people, but our numbers have been very high lately. We had 283 yesterday (Monday). We maximized our transportation, which means, once that happens, we can’t receive them here anymore because there’s no transportation here, so then we coordinate with Border Patrol, and Border Patrol releases (them) at Stripes.
“We then have volunteers at Stripes, and we have been doing that, but there’s not a lot the volunteers can do when there’s no transportation at Stripes, either,” Burrow said.
Burrow said there are still two Greyhound buses leaving Del Rio every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The buses sent to Del Rio have space for 20 passengers apiece, she said.
Burrow said her organization has asked Greyhound for more buses or buses with greater passenger capacity.
“We’ve asked. Greyhound has no equipment available. We did have one large bus come through, and the only reason we got that is because the smaller bus was broken, but get this: Greyhound did not open up the ticketing on that larger bus, so it left Del Rio empty, because nobody could buy those seats.”
Burrow emphasized that all of the migrants continue to buy their own tickets for transportation out of Del Rio.
“We have several charter buses that come, and we have been sending them to Dallas, to San Antonio and Houston,” she said.
Burrow added that the majority of the current groups of migrants originate from Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti.
Burrow said donations from the community continue to be welcome.
Burrow said the VVBHC currently needs peanut butter and jelly, preferably in the five-pound sizes, and loaves of bread for sandwiches.
She emphasized, however, that the center has limited space for storage, so the best thing local persons who want to help can do is make a monetary donation through the organization’s Facebook page or web site.
“Monetary donations are always helpful, so we can continue to put ink in our printers and pay our phone bills, since we have a bank of phones available here. Money goes for all the day-to-day needs here,” she said.
