SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria was in Washington D.C., last week for a housing conference. Still, he was able to find time for a quick meeting to share his concerns over the impending end of Title 42 with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Exponentially it will increase the number of people we need to provide shelter and services to, it’s not without impact,” said Gloria. “The kind of volume we anticipate certainly will require additional resources and a lot of communication.”
Gloria is concerned his city, like others along the southern border, will see a large influx of migrants when the order is lifted.
“During the unaccompanied minor crisis of 2021, we had tremendous amount of federal resources and we were able to successfully care for those children over the months that we housed them in the convention center, this is going to be larger than that and likely take longer than that.”
Gloria stated several organizations in San Diego are already making a difference for migrants, but he would like more financial assistance and other resources from the federal government to help these groups in the coming months.
“Organizations like Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Services are already providing that kind of service to people who are arriving today, but we want to make sure there are resources to be able to care for any additional increases, which we’re sure are going to come,” said Gloria.
He told Border Report with a little help, things should go smoothly if more migrants arrive in San Diego in the future.
“My ask to the secretary was to be in regular communication, to have a hotline, if you, will to meet challenges we’ll experience … we’d do well to triage individuals, find out where they are trying to go, connect them with sponsors, families so they don’t end up on the streets, don’t end up in homeless shelters making sure that our already difficult homeless situation is not exasperated by changes in immigration policy.”
Gloria is hopeful Mayorkas and Congress can figure out how to create immigration reform, otherwise, things for migrants and cities along the border in both countries, won’t get better.
