SAN DIEGO– Hundreds of migrants were dropped off at a bus stop in San Diego on Friday instead of a shelter that had served as a staging area because local funding ran out sooner than expected. This shows how even the largest city on the country’s southern border is struggling to cope with the unprecedented influx of people.
Migrants who previously had a safe place to charge phones, use the bathroom, eat a meal, and meet up to travel elsewhere in the U.S. were now left on the streets as migrant aid groups scrambled to do the best they could. to help with improvised arrangements.
Border Patrol buses carrying migrants from Senegal, China, Ecuador, Guatemala and many other countries arrived outside a transit center. Migrant aid groups said they would be bused from there to a parking lot where they could charge their phones and get a ride to the airport. The vast majority planned to spend only a few hours in San Diego before catching a flight or having someone pick them up.
“Are we in San Diego?” asked Gabriel Guzman, 30, a painter from the Dominican Republic who was released Thursday after crossing the border in remote mountains. He was told to appear in an immigration court in Boston in June, where he hopes to earn money to send home to his three children.
Abd Boudeah of Mauritania flew to Tijuana, Mexico, via Nicaragua and followed other migrants to an opening in the border wall, where he surrendered to agents Thursday after about eight hours of walking. The former molecular engineering student said he fled persecution for being gay and planned to settle in Chicago with a cousin who had lived in the US for 20 years.
“I dreamed a lot about this (moment), and thank God I am here,” Boudeah, 23, said in impeccable English.
Volunteers provided instructions in English, Spanish and French to small groups, all single men and women. They used translation apps for other languages.
“We’re going to cross the street together and stand in line,” a volunteer said into his phone, who then translated it into Hindi for a group of men from India.
“Tired from the road,” Alikan Rdiyer, 31, from Kazakhstan, said in Russian as he waited for instructions to give to a friend from Los Angeles who was picking him up. The Border Patrol issued him a summons to appear in immigration court in Philadelphia in August 2025 – a city he had never heard of.
The transit center parking lot was full of cars, leaving nowhere for migrants to stand, and there were no public restrooms. A taxi driver offered a ride to San Diego International Airport for $100, double what ride-sharing apps were charging. Some migrants dispersed nearby when volunteers could not reach them with instructions to wait on the sidewalk.
San Diego County has donated $6 million since October to SBCS, a nonprofit formerly known as South Bay Community Services, to provide phone charging stations, food, travel advice and other services at a former elementary school. The group wanted to keep it open through March, but Thursday was the last day.
San Diego is one of many local governments that have struggled to help migrants without sacrificing key services, including in New York, Chicago and Denver. Like other border cities, migrants often stay in San Diego for less than a day before moving on, but large shelters run by Jewish Family Service and Catholic Charities have been full for months, giving families priority.
Nora Vargas, chairwoman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, steadfastly supported the migrant welcome center but said the county needed to halt spending as it assesses damage from January’s catastrophic flooding and addresses homelessness and lack of health care among residents. “We have to be financially careful with that,” she says.
SBCS, which has faced scathing criticism from some immigrant advocacy groups, told the province its services cost $1.4 million a month, said spokesperson Margie Newman Tsay. The county asked to aim for $1 million.
“It’s not that the funds ran out prematurely, but that the funds were stretched as far as they could go,” Newman Tsay said.
Aid groups have provided critical support to newcomers, drawing criticism from some quarters. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week threatened to file a lawsuit and close Annunciation House, a decades-old organization that shelters migrants in El Paso. Paxton said the group may be “facilitating illegal entry into the United States.”
Ruben Garcia, executive director of Annunciation House, rallied supporters at a news conference Friday to denounce Paxton’s tactics. “It’s a complete warning to other entities that are also doing the work of hospitality that they could very well be next,” he said.
SBCS said it has served 81,000 migrants in San Diego since Oct. 11. A report to the province shows it spent $750,000 on staff and $152,000 on operating costs through Dec. 24, including lodging, transportation and security.
“I could have done a lot more with $6 million,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, a migrant aid group that helps with street releases.
Vargas, who wrote to President Joe Biden last week asking for support, defended SBCS’s performance and noted its previous work sheltering unaccompanied child migrants at the San Diego Convention Center in 2019.
“No one is perfect, especially when you’re trying to fill a void in the federal government,” Vargas said, reflecting a common view among major city mayors.
From October to January, the Border Patrol released more than 500,000 migrants with orders to appear in immigration court. Migrant aid groups are generally able to provide temporary shelter, but releases onto the streets are not unheard of. San Diego’s transit center was also the scene of large-scale releases last year.
San Diego has become one of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings, with an average of 800 arrests per day in January. Many come from West Africa and Asia, with a daily average of more than 100 from China in January.
The Border Patrol told migrant aid groups to expect 350 street releases on Friday, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico border program. Border Patrol had no immediate comment.
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Associated Press writer Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed.
