An official for the city of El Paso, Texas, told Newsmax on Friday the city has "a lot of plans in place" for dealing with the end of Title 42 immigration restrictions.
El Paso's Office of Emergency Management will use federal funding to convert two former middle schools that currently lie vacant into shelters for migrants and others who lack housing, the city announced this week.
Mario D'Agostino, deputy city manager of El Paso, said on "National Report:" "We have operationalized our sheltering system within the city of El Paso … and we've got two schools that are ready to go and operational. Right now, the numbers are extremely low. We have less than 150 people that the city of El Paso [is] sheltering. We're concerned about the numbers."
D'Agostino added that the city has been "preparing for well over a year" for the end of Title 42, saying that "the threat of it going away has been coming for a long time."
D'Agostino said: "We have a lot of plans in place. ... We opened two closed-down schools. We turned them into shelters, so we have capacity for large amounts of sheltering."
D'Agostino also noted: "We have our transportation plans to augment … [El Paso has] a medium-sized airport. And so there's a limited number of flights … going into it. Last week, I think our daily average was right around 500 available seats per day. And when you're seeing numbers like this that's truly not enough.
"So we've got to focus on how do we connect them to larger hubs so they can move on."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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