Send Migrants to Hotel or NYC? El Paso Mayor Declares State of Emergency

A potential surge of illegal immigrant crossings at the southern border has one big city mayor in Texas declaring a state of emergency to address the issue. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser has done such, and now he's faced on what to do with migrants as a cold Christmas week approaches.

Options for the city include putting the migrants in nearby hotels, putting them on a bus to a sanctuary city or let them freeze to death while homeless in the streets of the West Texas town.

The Trump-era Title 42 policy of swift deportation is set to expire on Wednesday. Most Republicans, and even some Democrats, have urged the Biden Administration to extend the law.

Leeser says his city is expected to receive at least 6,000 illegal immigrants per day once Title 42 expires this week.

"Our asylum seekers are not safe," Leeser at a press conference. "We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that's not the way we treat our people."

Leeser said that many "asylum seekers" have already been released into the city but that they are sleeping on the streets. The temperature was in the 30's by Saturday night and expected to be in either the 20's or 30's each night this next week, all the way through Christmas.

With an influx of migrants and a decrease in weather, it leaves city leaders in a conundrum.

"I want to make sure that people are treated with dignity," Leeser said. "This is bigger than El Paso. Everyday the situation changes. We have to adapt to different things day in and day out."

Here are some reports on what the city is doing while awaiting a federal extension of Title 42.

"HAPPENING NOW: The City of El Paso is moving migrants off the streets of #ElPaso. These migrants will be taken to a hotel. Some migrants tell me they're being offered a bus to NYC, but that's not their final destination," Jonathan Mejia tweeted.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reported that there were more than 277,000 encounters with illegal immigrants during October, of which more than 81,000 classified as Title 42 candidates.

A group of U.S. Congressmen, including both Democrats and Republicans, penned a letter to President Joe Biden this week to urge him to extend to Title 42 deadline. Authors included conservative Democrats—West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Texas Representative Henry Cuellar—along with Ohio Representative Tony Gonzalez and Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn.

"We have a crisis at our southern border," the letter stated. "Never before in our nation's history have we experienced this scope and scale of illegal border crossings, and we remain concerned that your administration has not provided sufficient support or resources to the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who are tasked with maintaining border security."

Just last week Biden flew to Arizona to give a quick speech at a computer chip factory and told reporters he had "more important" things to do than visit the border.

One reporter asked the president why he would venture to a border state without visiting the actual border.

"Because there are more important things going on," Biden answered. "They are going to invest billions of dollars in a new enterprise in the state."