El Paso Shelter Director: ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ Is Worst I’ve Ever Seen, ‘We Are Expecting the Worst’ when Title 42 Ends

Ian Hanchett

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “José Díaz-Balart” John Martin, who is the Director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso, TX stated that there is “a humanitarian crisis” in the city, “we’ve never seen the situation as critical” as it is now, and “we’re overwhelmed.” Martin also stated that they’re “expecting the worst” as Title 42 is lifted.

Martin said, “Well, the reality is that we’re overwhelmed. We’ve got several partners within the community. All of the emergency shelters are operating at or over capacity, and to give you an example of our situation with the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, we’ve got 200 inside the shelter, and we’ve had up to 810 outside the shelter camped in the alley. So, it truly is a humanitarian crisis.”

He added, “This all started for us a little over a week-and-a-half ago when we saw the influx come in, and then it’s exponentially increased. And it is prior to the lifting of Title 42, and we are expecting the worst. We are hearing numbers anywhere from 500 to 1,000 to 1,500, and it just depends upon the source that you’re talking to. The difficulty that we have is that we’ve got a mix of individuals and/or families as it relates to the processing, some of which that have gone through it, many of which that have not, and they’ve been relying on either the CBP One app or they’ve been trying to file their applications online. But most recently, we found that you’re not able to travel if you go through the online process or also what’s referred to as the pro se. So again, that means they’re staying in El Paso.”

Martin concluded, “In all honesty, even at the height of what we saw at the latter part of 2022, we’ve never seen the situation as critical as what you’ve got here.”

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