BORDER PATROL OPERATES OPEN AIR DETENTION SITES FOR OVER 100 DAYS

Border Patrol has maintained open-air detention sites on San Diego’s southern border for more than one-hundred days. Over that span, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been processed through camps that CBP does not officially acknowledge.

Some asylum seekers have spent days without shelter nor adequate food and water despite being detained in all but official designation. These sites are clustered in two areas in the county: San Ysidro, less than ten miles from the shore, and the desert more than eighty miles inland from the coast.

In San Ysidro, agents drop asylum seekers between the border walls at a steady pace. While there are at least three such sites, aid workers are only allowed access to one. At that site, the detained population has remained under one-hundred for some weeks. That population generally includes families, and Border Patrol all but relies on aid workers to provide food and shelter to detainees.

When LCRW visited this site on the 9th, an elderly asylum seeker described having previously fallen from the border wall. They recalled how they lost consciousness and notified aid workers of persistent pain. That asylum seeker was traveling with their grandchildren.

Volunteer aid workers have treated grievous injuries that resulted from border-wall falls. But several have required first-responders. Aid organizations gave LCRW this link with resources for those interested in helping at the border.

LCRW visited the San Ysidro site on Christmas Eve. At first, two families with small children were being held between the walls. Within an hour, an agent dropped off a van of fifteen asylum seekers and informed volunteers that an additional fifteen more were coming. He clarified that a total of thirty eight asylum seekers were being dropped off.

The agent told the group, including elementary-aged children, that they would either be transported in the night or in the following morning. 

In the desert around Jacumba, asylum seekers are corralled into several sites by Border Patrol. The agency maintains camps with populations that rarely drop below one-hundred. When LCRW visited these sites on the 14th, hundreds of migrants were held at detention sites in the Campo and Boulevard communities.

LCRW witnessed asylum seekers whose bracelets were marked “Tuesday.” Thursday the 14th was the second day in the open desert for those detained. Temperatures that day were recorded with a low of 40º F in the region.

Volunteers worked to build yurts at one detention site. Aid workers and asylum seekers worked together, fashioning donated materials into shelter from the cold.

In the days prior to LCRW’s visit, a Border Patrol agent instructed asylum seekers to tear down their own makeshift shelters. Since then, the agency has hired contractors to tear down other structures.Volunteers have since compiled a resource on yurt construction.

Bigots have periodically stopped at both the San Ysidro and Jacumba detention sites to gather footage for their propaganda. Internet commentator Danny Mullen brought former Bachelor competitor Leo Dottavio to Jacumba to film asylum seekers and harass aid workers. Self-described human trafficking investigator Anthony Aguero brought a partner to film and cast doubt on the plight of asylum seekers in San Ysidro. Aguero was present at the January 6 capitol riot in Washington, D.C.

Both sites have been subject to threats and the Jacumba site has [seen injury]. Aid workers circulated warnings about a man who threatened to “run down” migrants at the San Ysidro site. Miscreants at the Jacumba site ran over an asylum seeker’s foot while doing donuts dangerously close to migrants with nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, local elected officials have continued to espouse racially-coded “invasion” rhetoric. In October, County Supervisor Jim Desmond boosted claims that CBP sent an internal bulletin warning of encounters with Hamas fighters at the southern border. 

Later that month, CBP told media that “the agency has seen no indication of Hamas-directed foreign fighters seeking to make entry into the United States.”

Fascist propaganda outlets have since highlighted the number of asylum seekers dropped in San Diego county by Border Patrol—but decline to mention that most don’t plan to stay in San Diego. 

Four immigrant-rights organizations have jointly filed a complaint over family separations in San Diego. Aid organizations like Al Otro Lado have documented nearly 1,100 instances of family separation in the region. Asylum seekers were being released from Border Patrol custody separate from their families.

For these people, being processed out of the open-air detention sites yields yet another kind of suffering. Al Otro Lado has since told media that CBP claims this is the new normal.