San Diego’s Immigration Center announced Thursday that it will be forced to close due to a lack of funds to support the overwhelming number of asylum seekers who entered the county illegally.
The mayor of nearby El Cajon, California, told Fox News on Thursday that he was concerned that the closure of the welcome center could soon become a “serious problem” for the community.
“Over the past few months, we’ve had 100,000 immigrants come across the border in San Diego,” Mayor Bill Wells told “Fox & Friends First.”
“Many of them were absorbed by the shelter in this county, which used taxpayer money. They asked for $3 million, spent more than $6 million, and now they say they’re out of money. So the immigrants We’re going to see people converge on our cities.”
“I think it’s going to be a pretty serious problem pretty quickly.”
The center, which claims to process up to 800 migrants per day, provides services to the county to pick up migrants, bring them back to their locations, and prepare them for their journey to their final destination. A bus is being dispatched to the Border Patrol Station.
“Our limited resources are being stretched to their limits as the number of migrants arriving at our centers has increased significantly in recent weeks,” said SBCS CEO Kathy Lembo. stated in a statement.
Nearly 140,000 total illegal immigrants have entered the San Diego area since fiscal year 2024 began on October 1, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by FOX News. It was revealed.
“Border Patrol is telling us that we’re going to go from about 300 drop-offs per day to probably 1,000 drop-offs per day,” Wells said Thursday.
Asked by co-host Todd Pirro where immigrants would go without the center, Wells said hotels could be an undesirable solution that would exacerbate the state’s existing homelessness problem. He said that there is a sex.
“They were spending up to $8,000 per person a month to put someone in a hotel, and they don’t seem to have any qualms about spending that kind of money. It destroys neighborhoods, it destroys hotels. “It destroys, it destroys our safety infrastructure. And that’s really bad for everyone,” he said.
The 140,000 illegal immigrants encountered in San Diego include thousands of “special interest aliens,” classified as people from countries with potential national security concerns. .
FOX News’ Bill Melgin reported Friday that 21,000 Chinese nationals have been arrested in the San Diego area since October 1, according to CBP sources. This number was second only to Colombians and surprisingly exceeded the number of Mexicans.
Wells, who recently visited the border, said he saw an encampment of about 150 male Chinese immigrants.
“I think that’s a really serious concern. China is not neutral to us. At least in the Cold War at this point, they’re our enemy in a way. And we’re not seeing enemies of our country congregating in our cities. “I get nervous when I see them doing that,” he said.
Nearly 7.3 million immigrants have illegally crossed the Southwest border under President Biden’s watch, outnumbering the population of 36 states. This was revealed by a Fox News analysis.
The numbers come from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has already reported 961,537 border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October to September.
If the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow, the number of encounters at the southwest border in fiscal year 2024 will break last year’s record of 2,475,669; That would exceed the state’s population.
The total number of encounters at the Southwest land border since Biden took office in 2021 is 7,298,486, according to CBP data.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo, Bradford Betts, Adam Shaw, Bill Melgin and Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.
