While the impact of the Title 42 ruling has sent ripples throughout the southern border, the scene in El Paso is one of a kind
One-year-old Brenda’s tiny feet are bare on the cold asphalt of an El Paso parking lot as the harsh reality starts to sink in for her parents. They are undocumented. They are homeless. And their daughter barely escaped death when they crossed the Rio Grande. “My daughter would have died because she was super frozen,” said Glenda Matos. Matos’ pain is clear in her eyes as she recalls her daughter being drenched, in the freezing cold, all while crying hysterically.
And while the city has space for about 1,500 migrants at shelters that have been erected at the convention center and at a public school, those beds are only offered to migrants who have turned themselves in to border authorities and have been allowed to stay in the US pending their immigration cases. Those migrants receive documentation from US Customs and Border Protection that allows them to travel within the country.