ATLANTA — Huge crowds of asylum seekers were massing along the Mexico-U.S. border, Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, wanting to find refuge in the United States, including in metro Atlanta.
They know that Thursday night, the U.S. will lift COVID-era immigration restrictions under Title 42, potentially re-opening a pathway for them to be granted asylum in the U.S. -- even as the Biden Administration promises to crack down on illegal border crossings.
And in Atlanta, civic and humanitarian aid organizations are getting ready for another influx of migrants.
Santiago Marquez, CEO of the Latin American Association, has been watching video of the crowds along the border, and he said it is impossible to estimate how many people will be admitted to the U.S., and how many of them will find their way to Atlanta.
“We're getting ready to face this emergency,” Marquez said Wednesday. “We see it as an emergency. We see it as a crisis.”
A humanitarian crisis, he said. So the LAA is preparing for perhaps hundreds of new migrants, perhaps more.
Last summer, the organization took in 700 migrants who arrived all at once. Within two weeks, Marquez said, most were already, on their own, finding jobs with steady paychecks.
He’s determined not to have to turn anyone away this time, either.
“It's really a process of case management assessment,” he said. “Comforting them, giving them some food, and then trying to find some kind of solution for them. For the longer term. We can do all those things, but we do need more resources in order to be able to put these families in extended stays. Those resources are really drying up.”
Maggie Burgess of Team Libertad in Atlanta said volunteers are getting ready, now, to help new arrivals with crucial support toward becoming self-supporting.
“What we can expect to see is the need for integration and food and shelter for folks who have been prevented from legally seeking asylum for a very long time,” Burgess said.
Burgess said aid organizations are putting politics aside.
"I think it's at the core of our nation's values, and it's at the core of the Atlanta community," Burgess added. "Asylum seekers can be welcomed and cared for and housed and sheltered. It is a communal effort, and it will have to be a community-wide effort really across our nation, but also here in Atlanta, if we are to again welcome people who are finally receiving the ability to exercise their legal right to seek asylum.”
Marquez said people from Latin America, on the run through Central America and Mexico, are running from oppressive governments, and running to the U.S.
“This is tough. And however you feel about this, these are human beings that are coming to participate in the American dream. Last year, many of them were from Venezuela, most of the people we saw were escaping that communist dictatorship, an oppressive government," Marquez said. "So a lot of these folks are on the run from oppressive governments, and they believe in this country. And so I would just say, let's be patient. Let's treat folks like human beings and let's all help each other to help the folks that are coming here and try to find a good solution for everybody.”
How many, and when, will start becoming clear when Title 42 is lifted Thursday at midnight.