A San Diego migrant shelter that has had more than half a dozen locations since it opened in late 2018 has found a home for the next two and a half years.
The Jewish Family Service shelter spent most of 2019 in an old downtown court building offered by the county, but that lease was up at the end of December. The shelter is now in its seventh home, a California-owned facility in Linda Vista after an empty building considered “excess property” was re-purposed on suggestion from the state.
“We hope to be here for a while,” said Michael Hopkins, chief executive officer of Jewish Family Service.
He said the organization was grateful to the county for the time in the court building, but that he knew from the beginning that it would not be permanent.
“The day we got into the courthouse was the day we knew we needed to start looking,” Hopkins said, reflecting on the months-long search for the right space.
Since opening in October 2018 after the federal government ended a program that ed newly arrived migrant families in reaching their loved ones across the country who had agreed to help them, the shelter has housed nearly 21,000 people.
The vast majority do not stay in San Diego, said Kate Clark, an attorney on Jewish Family Service’s immigration team. Families generally spend between one and three days at the shelter before moving on to their final destinations.
In recent months, the most popular destination for shelter guests has been Texas, followed by Florida and California.
Jewish Family Service asked that San Diego Union-Tribune withhold the exact location of the shelter because of security concerns.
The new space has room for 77 beds, but Jewish Family Service keeps overflow plans in place just in case. The shelter has had to use those plans some in the past as daily arrivals fluctuate.
The numbers have trended lower since the Trump istration fully implemented its Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as “Remain in Mexico” program, that sends asylum-seekers back to Tijuana to wait for immigration court cases in the U.S.
In the beginning of the summer, as more families were included in the Remain in Mexico program, the shelter saw fewer arrivals. The demographics shifted as well. Haitians have become one of the largest groups ing through, followed by Mexicans and Hondurans.
That trend is changing again, according to Clark, as more families in the Remain in Mexico program get processed by immigration court. Once court cases end for migrants in MPP, Mexico often won’t let U.S. officials send them back to Tijuana again, so they are then allowed inside the United States.
Families are also released from the program on the U.S. side of the border if they can a strict screening meant to determine how likely they are to be harmed in Mexico if they say they are afraid to go back there.
Between August and December, the shelter helped 578 people, all part of families, who were formerly part of MPP, Clark said, with increases every month.
Eight of them were people who won their cases, she said. Another 133 lost and decided to appeal their cases, meaning that they could not yet be deported. The rest either ed their fear screenings or had their cases closed by the immigration judge, likely because the judge believed the government hadn’t followed due process.
The majority of those who through the shelter are still migrants who were never part of the MPP program, Clark said.
As migrants walk into the new shelter, they are greeted by a mural — a heart with the word “welcome” written in nine languages. A hummingbird hovers on each side of the heart to represent migration but also love and hope.
They are taken for medical screenings and given fresh clothes. Bottles of water are stored in corners of public rooms so that the newcomers know they can help themselves. That reassures them that they’re not in custody anymore, Hopkins explained.
The walls are freshly painted, and the floors are new, all part of a quick and laborious construction project that turned the building into a space that could house families overnight and offer them a chance to relax and rest before their journeys continue.
The shelter experienced a flu outbreak last year after Border Patrol in Texas put sick migrants on flights to San Diego, but so far this year, that hasn’t been an issue, Clark said.
On Friday afternoon, some families had already arrived at the shelter and were lounging with their loved ones in the play room or dormitory. A family from Guerrero, Mexico with a four-month-old son in a “Monsters, Inc.” onesie had an initial medical screening with the shelter’s medical staff, contracted through the University of California San Diego.
A volunteer rushed out the door, car seat in one hand and booster seat in the other, to pick up another family that had been released at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. The shelter received a call from a community member who spotted the stranded family. The volunteer heard that the family had a young child, but since she didn’t know how big the child was, she decided to grab both seats to be safe.
Border Patrol agents in San Diego and El Centro drop off migrant families at the shelter, as do officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Shelter volunteers drive down to San Ysidro to pick up those released directly by officers at the port of entry.
While the shelter has found a permanent location — at least for the next two years — what will happen in the longer term is still up for discussion. The shelter requires about $7 million per year to operate, Hopkins said.
“This is an expensive operation. We definitely need government to make this happen,” Hopkins said. “It would be impossible to operate a shelter on the shoulders of philanthropy.”
