SAN YSIDRO, Calif. (KGTV) – More than 60 migrants reportedly became stuck in the Tijuana River in the San Ysidro area, prompting a response from multiple agencies and emergency responders early Thursday morning.
At around 4 a.m., San Diego Police officers, Border Patrol agents, firefighters, and paramedics were dispatched to an emergency call that came from an area behind a shopping mall in the 4300 block of Camino De La Plaza.
ABC 10News learned the incident involved a group of over 60 men, women and children.
The ABC 10News Breaking News Tracker observed at least one person being taken away in an ambulance, who was joined by another person holding a small child.
Border Patrol confirms one person was taken to the hospital. The other members of the group were processed by Border Patrol agents.
This situation is a story that James Cordero and Jaqueline Arellano with Border Kindness hear time and time again.
“You see folks receiving medical care. There are children there. There are barefoot people in the cold and unfortunately, none of those things are out of the ordinary when people are up against circumstances where they have nowhere else to go," said Jaqueline Arellano of Border Kindness.
Their group drops water and other resources along the southern border for migrants.
"The fact that we have had to move to once a month drops of our supplies in the desert to weekly, and, literally, that’s not enough to keep up with the crisis of need that’s out there is consistently increasing," said Arellano.
Customs and Border Protection statistics show that during the fiscal year 2019, there were 851,508 land encounters along the southern border. This past fiscal year, that number was 2,206,436.
President Joe Biden’s new immigration policy is supposed to drop that number while expanding legal pathways to migration, according to administration officials.
“Where people are showing up right outside of Port of Entries to turn themselves in, and now we fear it will create a lot more traffic into these deadlier, more remote areas that as history shows us each year gets deadlier," said James Cordero.
The two said the border policies they are seeing now mirror what the previous administration did. The tone is the only difference.
“What we concern ourselves with as an organization and as a community is how people’s lives are impacted and how people’s lives are impacted is the same," said Arellano.
