California to pay for quarantine of refugees seeking asylum at Mexico border
California plans to spend $28 million to aid asylum seekers entering the country through the U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to await their court dates.
The state funding comes after the Biden administration announced in February that it would begin allowing immigrants with credible asylum claims, who were previously waiting in Mexico under former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, to continue their immigration proceedings on U.S. territory.
“We have been in discussions ... with the Biden administration through the Department of Homeland Security about this change in policy on our side of the border and what we are willing to do to help that be as seamless a process as possible,” said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the California Department of Finance.
About $20 million of that funding will go toward the California Department of General Services to pay for hotel rooms in order to quarantine and isolate migrants for seven to ten days amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Some of the funds will go toward a community-based organization, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, to offer migrants case management services, medical care, transportation, food and COVID-19 testing. The state is currently in the process of contracting the community-based organization for those services, according to Palmer.
The funding signals the cooperation between California and the federal government over immigration policy, Palmer said, a difference from the way the state responded to previous immigration policies under the Trump administration.
The funding is expected to last through June.
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to process about 25 asylum seekers through the San Diego border per day. That number will eventually increase to 300 asylum seekers a day.
“As President Biden has made clear, the U.S. government is committed to rebuilding a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement in February announcing the department’s new policy. “This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values.”
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