LAREDO, Texas (Border Report) — The city of Reynosa will not raze the only migrant shelter in town after a court on Friday issued a temporary injunction stopping Sunday’s demolition, Border Report has learned.
Videos sent to Border Report from the Senda de Vida nonprofit faith-based shelter showed employees and migrants and the pastor who runs the facility celebrating upon hearing the news on Friday afternoon.
The City of Reynosa on Tuesday issued an eviction notice to the 14-year-old shelter, citing that it was improperly built on a flood plain too close to the Rio Grande.
The mayor of Reynosa mayor on Thursday tweeted that the Mexican section of the International Boundary and Water Commission had given them authority to evict the shelter from the lands that are close to the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge.
The shelter had five days to evacuate and faced demolition on Sunday. But that deadline has now been extended, members of the non-governmental organizations Angry Tias and Abuelas, and the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers told Border Report.
“It is a miracle for the migrants,” one supporter said in Spanish in a Facebook video posted by the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers.
About 600 migrants live at the shelter and volunteers have been for the past few weeks in the process of relocating hundreds of migrants from a filthy and dangerous downtown plaza where an estimated 3,000 migrants currently live in tents and some in the open air.
An outbreak of COVID-19 at the camp has infected dozens at the camp, prompting volunteers to scramble to find areas where they can safely quarantine them.
Reynosa is a dangerous city that the State Department warns Americans not to travel to, and it is controlled by drug cartels and gangs who often prey upon the migrants, the volunteers say.
Volunteers had been building an extension to the back of the Senda de Vida shelter and had a new concrete base, block wall and were in the process of soliciting donations for a roof when the eviction notice was served earlier this week.
It is uncertain if construction will continue.
This story will be updated if more information is received.
