cogitoergofun:

US Border Patrol sends migrants places where no help waits

NEW YORK (AP) — When Wilfredo Molina arrived in the U.S. from his native Venezuela, he told border agents he wanted to go to Miami but didn'

AP NEWS

When Wilfredo Molina arrived in the U.S. from his native Venezuela, he told border agents he wanted to go to Miami but didn’t have an address. They directed him to what he thought was a shelter in midtown Manhattan but turned out to be a gray office building.

“It was a fake building. I didn’t understand what it was,” he said.

Molina was among 13 migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. who agreed to share documents with The Associated Press that they received when they were released from U.S. custody while they seek asylum after crossing the border with Mexico. The AP found that most had no idea where they were being sent — nor were they expected by anyone at the addresses listed on their paperwork.

Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not respond to repeated questions about families and individuals interviewed and the addresses assigned to them.

But the snafus suggest a pattern of Border Patrol agents, particularly in Texas, sending migrants without friends or family in the United States to offices that get no notice. The places often don’t have space to house migrants. Yet because those addresses appear on migrants’ paperwork, important notices may later be sent there.

[…]

“It almost seems as though, at the border, officials are simply just looking up any nonprofit address they can or just looking up any name at all that they can and just putting that down without actually ever checking whether that person has mentioned it, whether there’s beds or shelter at that location, or whether this is even a location that can provide legal assistance,” said Lauren Wyatt, managing attorney with Catholic Charities of New York. “So clearly, this is not the most effective way to do this.”