San Diego streets, airport flooded with 1,500 migrants after mass-release

The streets and airport in San Diego have reportedly been flooded with approximately 1,500 migrants after a recent mass-release. 

San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said Border Patrol released more than 1,500 migrants to the San Ysidro bus stop within a three-day span after a $6 million taxpayer-funded migrant processing center that had been operating by a non-profit out of an abandoned elementary school closed last week, FOX 5 San Diego reported. 

"It’s disgraceful for our country and what we’ve become and the fact that this is how we treat immigrants," Desmond said. "Border Patrol is their Uber, San Diego is their travel agent."

Desmond said that the San Diego Migrant Welcome Center should never have been funded by taxpayers, and ran out of money in just four and half months. It went through about $1.5 million per month, providing migrants with a place to take refuge and charge their phones until they were processed and sent to their final destinations. 

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Migrants wait to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol at a makeshift camp next to the border wall on Feb. 22, 2024, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)

The center had processed more than 81,000 migrants since October. After its closure, hundreds of migrants arrived at the San Diego airport, according to KUSI. 

"We’ve got a legal system in place, where people can apply online throughout the world, they can go to an embassy, they can come in with dignity, without having to cross through a fence or go through a river," Desmond said. "And right now, what we’re allowing to happen is, we’re allowing people who just walk across the border to jump ahead of the line. And I don’t blame them for doing it if we’re allowing it to happen. Why apply legally, if you can just jump ahead of the line."

The outlet's news crews witnessed a bus full of migrants arrive at the airport around 7 p.m. Friday. 

A non-profit was helping migrants check in for flights, while another charity group was seen handing out food to migrants sleeping at the airport, FOX 5 reported. 

One migrant, Mustapha Micradi, told the outlet he had been sleeping outside the airport for about five days because he could not access his bank account in Morocco. He said he crossed the border with a large group of other migrants, was processed by Border Patrol and taken to a transit center where they then boarded a bus to the airport. He was hoping to fly to New York. 

Border patrol agents process migrants at an improvised camp near the U.S.-Mexico border on Feb. 20, 2024 in Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)

Desmond said he spotted more than 100 migrants being dropped off at a San Ysidro bus stop on Sunday morning. 

He said many migrants asked him how to get to New York, Virginia and other destinations. There were no bathroom facilities for the released migrants to use, so some relieved themselves in the parking lot of the MTS bus stop and changed clothes in between cars in the parking lot, Desmond recalled. 

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The supervisor noted the federal government does operate one migrant center in the county but demanded they do more to address the issue. 

An aerial image shows the U.S.-Mexico border fence with camp shelters left behind by migrants in San Ysidro, California, on Sept. 14, 2023. (SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP via Getty Images)

The Times of San Diego also reported about how the Iris Transit Center in San Ysidro, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, had been flooded with migrants in recent days. 

Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director and co-founder of the Immigration Defenders Law Center, spoke with the newspaper about how volunteer-run groups were scrambling after the county-run migrant welcome center shut its doors. 

Migrants sit inside a tent as they wait to be processed by Border Patrol at an improvised camp near on Feb. 7, 2024, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)

She said they were working to provide resources to help migrants dropped on the streets of San Diego to travel to their final destinations, often elsewhere in the country.

"What we’re seeing is community stepping up where the federal government has failed to do so," she said. "The people we’re helping are so resourceful. They have made it this far, they are the survivors, they are so strong and resilient … and all they need is for people to give them a little bit of help."

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"They really just need us to meet them with kindness and information to get them to where they’re going," Toczylowski said.