LAREDO, Texas \u2014\u00a0Walking through the aisles of bunk beds at the Laredo Holding Institute, you\u2019ll find Bibles, coloring books and stuffed animals. There is a sign of the community living here: families finding their way to their next destination.<\/p>\n
The Holding Institute, a nonprofit shelter in Laredo, is no stranger to assisting migrants, but things had been quiet since border crossings dropped to historic lows. So it was a surprise when they got a call from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) saying a bus was on its way with migrant families.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the first night was pretty high,\u201d Director Michael Smith said. \u201cMaybe 75, 85 [people].\u201d<\/p>\n
The buses have continued coming since that first one in mid-January. The Holding Institute said it has received about 463 people so far. All are migrant families who were detained while living in the U.S., not recent crossers. Smith said they\u2019re coming from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, about an hour north of Laredo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe change now, as opposed to years past, is we\u2019re getting an increase of arrivals who have been in the system for a matter of years, and they are circling back,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said he recently met with the deputy ICE director to clarify who is being released and why.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks like they\u2019re picking up people, even ones that are in process to become legalized,\u201d Cuellar said.<\/p>\n
Cuellar also said the meeting confirmed that the people being released to Laredo are families.<\/p>\n
While it wasn\u2019t directly referenced as a reason for the releases, a ruling known as the \u201cFlores Settlement Agreement\u201d states the government is legally not allowed to hold children in immigration detention for longer than 20 days. The center in Dilley, the only facility the Holding Institute is receiving people from, only holds children and families.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News 1 reached out to ICE three times to confirm why people were being released and why they were detained. They did not answer.<\/p>\n
In a Feb. 5 interview, Laredo Mayor Dr. Victor Trevi\u00f1o told Spectrum News 1 he worried about public health in his city. Among other problems the migrants are facing, there have been several measles cases reported in the Dilley facility. Trevi\u00f1o, who served as Laredo\u2019s health authority during the pandemic, said outbreaks in a border town can be particularly difficult to manage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you get people with unvaccinated status or variants of measles from other countries and put them together in detention centers\u2026that could cause a further outbreak of measles variants, and that is concerning,\u201d Trevi\u00f1o said.<\/p>\n
While arriving in Laredo may be a setback for some families in the immigration process, Smith said they have been \u201ceager\u201d to leave as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I say that they are eager to go home, they aren\u2019t eager to go home to Cuba. They\u2019re eager to go home to Minnesota; they\u2019re eager to go home to Los Angeles,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat\u2019s their home. That\u2019s what they gave up everything for, and that\u2019s where they want to return.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAREDO, Texas \u2014\u00a0Walking through the aisles of bunk beds at the Laredo Holding Institute, you\u2019ll find Bibles, coloring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1657,1658,2160,132,134,133,1570,102,138,25382,1724,30720,223,287,82,1569,2053,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-179862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","9":"tag-app-local-state-politics","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-austin","12":"tag-austin-headlines","13":"tag-austin-news","14":"tag-ctv","15":"tag-dallas","16":"tag-el-paso","17":"tag-from-the-border","18":"tag-immigration","19":"tag-lily-celeste","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-san-antonio","23":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}