Hundreds of illegal immigrants were reportedly released into San Diego, California on Friday from Border Patrol custody.
About 200 undocumented migrants, who traveled from Peru, India, and Colombia, were mass released in the San Ysidro district of San Diego despite most of them saying they were traveling to Atlanta and Minneapolis to look for work.
Bill Melugin, the national correspondent for Fox News, explained that the reason for the mass release into San Diego had to do with the city spending millions of dollars building a migrant shelter.
According to the New York Post, the shelter, which allegedly housed up to 800 migrants daily, was forced to shut down after running out of funds to accommodate the overwhelming number of migrants.
“Over the past few months, we’ve seen 100,000 migrants come across the San Diego border,” Mayor Bill Wells told “Fox & Friends First.”
“A lot of those have been absorbed by this county shelter that used taxpayer money. They asked for $3 million and they spent over $6 million and now they say they’re out of money. So we’re going to see migrants congregating in our streets... I think it’s going to become a pretty serious problem pretty quickly.”
Prior to shutting down, the migrant shelter had been sending buses to county Border Patrol stations to pick up migrants and bring them to the facility and offer services to prepare them to their final destination.
“As the number of migrants arriving at the center has increased significantly over the last few weeks, our finite resources have been stretched to the limit,” SBCS CEO Kathie Lembo said in a statement.
According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by Fox News, a total of nearly 140,000 undocumented immigrants have crossed into the San Diego sector since Fiscal Year 2024 began on October 1st.
“The Border Patrol tells us we’re going to go from about 300 drop-offs a day to maybe a thousand drop-offs a day,” Wells said Thursday.
The mayor added that while hotels could be an alternative place in light of the shelter’s closing, it would only add to California’s current homeless problem.
“They spent up to $8,000 per person per month to put somebody up in a hotel, and they seem to have no problem spending that kind of money. It ruins the neighborhoods, it destroys the hotels, it destroys our security infrastructure. And it’s really bad for everybody,” he said.
Melugin noted that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has remained silent on the issue with the influx of illegal immigration, Town Hall reports.
When Fox News Digital asked Newsom to comment on the issue at hand, a spokesperson for his administration argued that Republicans are at fault for a failing border system.
"When it comes to border security, Republicans in Congress have done nothing but create chaos and sabotage any attempts at progress," the spokesperson said. "In the absence of any political courage from the Republican Party, California has once again stepped up – making historic investments and serving as a model of partnership for a safe and humane border. It's past time for the spineless politicians in Congress to do their job."
Image credit: ©Tyrel Johnson/Unsplash
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
