San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond told The New York Post that a “minimum” of 125,000 migrants have entered San Diego in the last seven months.
The migrants were released onto the city’s streets “without proper vetting,” he said.
“That’s just the minimum we know about and doesn’t include families, boat arrivals, or elderly people who are processed differently,” Desmond explained. “The numbers have gone through the roof.”
Desmond added that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not have enough resources to vet illegal immigrants.
“It’s a national issue, as most people are released from detention within 24-48 hrs and [then] going elsewhere in the country – many to the East Coast,” he said.
The vetting process often takes 72 hours.
The San Diego sector “saw an 85% increase in encounters in February compared to the same month last year,” a statement from a video shared on X says.
“Currently, the Border Patrol is still just dropping off migrants, several hundred a day,” Desmond says in the video. A lot of them end up at our airport. So, unfortunately, San Diego Airport now has become the de facto migrant shelter, where they sleep there.”
