By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — U.S.-authorized asylum seekers assisted by Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) may remember our city primarily as a place where they slept on hotel beds with clean linens, had three meals a day delivered to them, and got their first prolonged taste of American television.
After the Border Patrol and ICE release asylum seekers to the care of Jewish Family Service, they are moved to hotel rooms where they await the results of previously administered COVID tests and confer with JFS caseworkers about the documentation they will need and the routes they will take as they travel by plane or bus to unification with relatives or sponsors.
According to Michael Hopkins, the JFS chief executive officer, at any given time 700 asylum seekers, mostly families with young children, are in the care of his agency. Their average stay in San Diego is about three days, during which time they are expected to remain in their undisclosed hotel locations both for health and security reasons. The mix of their countries of origin changes, but last week most were from Mexico, Honduras and Venezuela — in that order. Other weeks, Brazilians have been among the top three.
Meetings with case workers, food delivery volunteers, and UC San Diego Medical Center health professionals are the families’ primary contacts with Americans during their brief San Diego stays, Hopkins said in an interview. Televisions in their rooms are the chief source of diversion and entertainment while they await transportation on the next stage of their journeys.
Most San Diego televisions receive programs from both English-language and Spanish-language stations, but there are more English-language stations, offering greater variety for family viewers.
While staying in a hotel room for three days, diverted only by television, is less than ideal, said Hopkins, “on the other hand, relative to the conditions that they were in on the other side of the border, they are in a safe environment. They know where their meals are coming from. They are sleeping in a bed with clean linen. It’s not ideal but, considering all the alternatives that could be out there, it is a benefit.”
Hopkins said from the reports he receives from his Spanish-speaking staff, he would say the asylum seekers are coming to the United States “because they are fleeing violent situations in their home countries. While we do have some individual adults, the majority are families, and they have traveled a long way with rather young children. Families do that when they believe that the safety of their family is being jeopardized. Is this the case in every situation? I don’t know that. I do know that the majority are definitely coming from those situations.”
Hopkins noted that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees recently encouraged the Biden Administration to end enforcement of Title 42, the code that permits the government to turn away asylum seekers for health reasons, in this case the coronavirus pandemic.
“Right now, there are a growing number of folks who are trying to cross the border in other ways because the Port of Entry is closed,” Hopkins said. Observing that some migrants have drowned off San Diego’s coast during unsuccessful smuggling attempts in small boats, he said: “Those situations are going t continue to occur as folks are desperate to continue their asylum process. … While we are in the midst of a pandemic, it feels that there ought to be a way to reestablish a program for our country.”
The agency that became Jewish Family Service was founded 103 years ago “by women who went down to the border, and we are guided by the teaching ‘Welcome the Stranger,'” Hopkins related. “So, according to our understanding of our role in the community, it is to be that welcoming part of our community for folks who are seeking a better life. So, whether those are refugees in refugee camps throughout the world, or whether they are folks who are presenting themselves at the border here in San Diego, our perspective is to help them in their journey. And that involves working with government, helping to inform government what folks are experiencing, and advocating for policies that support that effort.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Thanks for this article. This is where I volunteer on Thursdays. JFS does good work.