MURRIETA, Calif. — A crowd of 200 to 300 people in downtown Murrieta surrounded three buses carrying immigrant detainees Tuesday afternoon, prompting the buses to turn around before they reached a Border Patrol station in the Riverside County city.
Waving Americans flags and protest signs, the crowd refused to give way when the buses arrived with some 140 detainees from Texas, which has seen a flood of Central American immigrants cross the border in recent weeks without legal permission.
A small number of Murrieta police officers stood between the protesters and the buses but could not keep the crowd from blocking the buses’ path.
The face-off came one day after Mayor Alan Long urged residents to protest the federal government’s decision to move the recent immigrants who arrived in the country illegally — and have overwhelmed Texas border facilities — to the Border Patrol station in his city.
“Murrieta expects our government to enforce our laws, including the deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing our borders, not disperse them into our local communities,” Long said Monday at a news conference. The city had defeated two previous attempts to send migrants to the facility, he said.
An initial 140 migrants were expected to arrive in Murrieta on Tuesday afternoon, Long said, followed by arrivals every 72 hours for several weeks. The detainees are primarily children accompanied by mothers or fathers. They will be processed at the Murrieta facility before being placed under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who will ensure that they are united with family throughout the country, Long said.
This year, Border Patrol agents across the Southwest have detained more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors, with a particular concentration along the Rio Grande border in Texas, according to federal records.
Because of this influx, officials are sending migrants to Border Patrol facilities in less heavily trafficked areas, such as Southern California, for processing and supervised release by ICE agents.
By sending migrants to the Murrieta facility, the federal government is not properly enforcing immigration laws that require immediate deportation of undocumented immigrants, Long said.
But, according to the mayor, public safety officials were fully prepared for the arrival and have established an information hotline that residents can use for updates on the transfer.
“I can say, without equivocation, Murrieta will remain safe,” Long said.
Murrieta is one of several cities whose facilities will receive migrants as the government seeks to lessen the burden on the Texas border. Migrants will also be sent to a border patrol facility in El Centro, Calif., in neighboring Imperial County, as well as a center in New Mexico, which has also caused lawmakers there to protest.
In his comments Monday, Long emphasized the temporary nature of the new arrivals.
“There is not, and never has been, any intention to release these immigrants locally out the front door of the Border Patrol office,” he said.
