Three years ago, the Regional Center for Border Health made
a pivot.
They asked Border Patrol to begin releasing asylum seekers to
them
instead of dropping them off on the streets
from makeshift tents outside a clinic in Somerton,
a small farming community South of Yuma.
They feed these families, offer medical care
and help arrange their travel so that they can unite
with the family or sponsors who are waiting for them
across the country.
I'm Joanna, all hands and with editorial page editor Elvia
Diaz.
We sat down to ask Amanda Aguirre,
who heads the clinic, about this exhausting work.
Can you explain to me what release means?
You you you were saying we don't want Border Patrol
to release them.
I hear activists saying we want Border Patrol to release
them.
So I'm confused. Well, if you are a migrant and
you're just crossed the river
undocumented, and you are turning yourself into the Border Patrol
and you're saying I'm seeking asylum for me and my
entire family,
the family, the Border Patrol has a duty
by law that they have to detain those individuals and
process them
in the detention center. They once you're done,
processed by the Border Patrol,
you are free to go,
you're free to go So they can open the door
at the Border Patrol in a detention center
and said you're free to go.
So when you're free to go
and you don't know where you are,
you're coming from Russia, you're coming from Romania,
you're coming from India, you're coming from Ukraine,
you're coming from South South America or coming from any
country in the world,
140 different countries we have processed here.
And you don't know where you,
where you are. And you're in Yuma at the detention
center,
and you're saying you're ready to go,
You can walk. You're free to go.
Welcome to America. That's when we said
don't release and let us help the families
so they're not sleeping in the streets like in Texas.
So how, what is the main problem that needs to
be solved at the poor?
Well, we have to have a humanitarian way to
process these families in terms of how they
are asking for asylum. We have to work with
those countries where people are coming from,
that they're suffering violence, that they're being families being abused,
family members being killed, women being,
you know, used for sex trafficking.
We have to work with those countries.
What are the means that you see when people arrive?
Is it mostly healthcare kind of things?
Is that, you know, mental care?
What are the things like when people come over the
border?
What help do they need?
Well, our help that we support here is with anything
they might need.
If they need a jacket,
we'll go and buy a jacket.
If they need food, we provide the food,
we provide them a meal,
wants to get released from the Border Patrol,
then we go and pick them up or being in
here and they're being fed.
If they need a system with medical care,
I have a medical clinic that also a nursing station
that we can triage and have my doctors
either they go to the clinic or have a nurse
practitioner that comes and see them in where we're processed
and when we have surges,
the nurse practitioners are there 100%
of the time. So we provide the services that might
be medications.
Any assistant, the pregnant women,
they'll get checked and they'll get symbiot.
My I have OBGYN, so the children,
pediatricians. So we provide that care that they might need
it.
So what do you tell people that say we should
not spend a single penny of taxpayers money on foreigners,
some people that should not be here on the first?
Well, I always say that we're doing it for one
reason,
a humanitarian reason. And if you see the face of
the families are coming across the border asking for asylum,
you will. And you know that stories that many of
them tell us their stories.
You will know why this country is so great to
to begin with,
because we can be a humanitarian country.
Like how did you provide services 10 years ago and
how how does it,
how has it changed now what 10 years we didn't
have.
I was not involved in
working with the Border Patrol,
in
working with the people they're being released right there were
deporting people and that's
a number they were seeing were manageable.
They were arresting people were escaping.
They were not turning themselves to the Border Patrol.
That's the different things Why now we have
thousands and thousands of individuals turning themselves every day to
the Border Patrol
and they don't have a capacity
to even house them in a detention centers.
This is the numbers here today.
For a year over two,
200,000 people we have assisted
with food, with shelter, with transportation.
We have reunited. We have reunited with their families and
their sponsors.
Am I seeing this right that it was from 20?
In 2021 you had 12,000 refugees that you've helped and
in the last two years you're 90 + 1000 people.
That's unsustainable, isn't it? That's not sustainable.
And I don't care that any politician is saying we
got to create a sustainable system.
Not this way.
So what? What is a solution?
Because there is a point about the sheer number of
people
showing up asking for asylum.
Can the United States handle this kind of number?
It will take a lot.
It will take a lot of work not sharing the
border.
It will take a lot to work with all the
countries where these folks are coming from,
because there's a reason why they leave in the country.
Many of them would like to be in their own
country,
but they can stay because of their violence.
They can stay because of their poverty.
What are some of the things that journalists do not
ask
that you wish
journalists in general would come to you and talk to
you about?
Well, I think that most people are interested in the
question that you just asked me.
Who's coming across the border?
How is it being treated by the Border Patrol?
And I know that many people make the better patrol
or the bad guys.
There's a lot of good guys
and believe me, we're all exhausted
because if we have processed
200,000, they have done it twice the amount
of what we have done.
And they have gone through interviews,
making sure that the family will be OK.
The United States has a place to go.
How do we change the mindset that the not all
the oil patrol is bad?
I don't know. You have to really understand and go
and see them work.
We do.
We meet with them, we meet with the officers,
We get the pictures of people being
stoned like they did the other day in the news
here in Yuma,
by gang members in the Mexican side when they're trying
to assist the families.
I mean, in Spanish we call in la Miga,
right? We don't call them anymore.
Why is that?
You know, they're our partners.
They are part of this humanitarian airport too.