The border crisis, with the arrival of at least 2,000 people per day seeking asylum, brought the city of El Paso, Texas, to "a breaking point." This was explained by Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser during a press conference, in which he highlighted that the city does not have sufficient resources to handle the situation.
"The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to... a breaking point right now," Mayor Leeser said in a statement reported by Fox News.
The Democrat highlighted that although his government was prepared to face the arrival of migrants, the numbers have grown so quickly that it can no longer cope with the situation. "So, this is something that we've been prepared for, but these numbers have really escalated a lot quicker than we ever anticipated," Leeser said.
Lesser explained that El Paso plans to open a new shelter and on Saturday rented five buses to take immigrants to New York, Chicago and Denver. According to Reuters, he explained that migrants choose which city they want to be sent to. Likewise, Leeser criticized the immigration system:
I think it's really important to note that we have a broken immigration system,
The immigration crisis not only affects cities like El Paso, but is becoming a problem for the entire country. Nationwide illegal migrant encounters with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) increased at least 300% since 2020, which was the last fiscal year on record under President Donald Trump's administration.
According to a report released by CBP, illegal immigrant encounters in fiscal year 2022 were 2.7 million, the highest total since fiscal year 2020, when encounters were at just 646,000.
