Early Wednesday morning, several asylum-seeking families living in tents in a Barrio Logan park received a warning from police that they had to move. Otherwise, they could be arrested.
It was the second warning they’d received since some parents whose children play soccer at Cesar Chavez Park complained to local TV stations about the families’ presence. But the families said they didn’t have any other options.
“It traumatizes you to not have a place to go, to not have a place to be,” said one Nicaraguan father in Spanish. He and the other asylum seekers in this article asked not to be identified because of their ongoing vulnerable situations.
Asylum seekers usually have loved ones somewhere in the United States willing to help them get settled, but for the ones who don’t, time in San Diego’s migrant shelters is limited. Afterwards, they often end up in local homeless shelters. But with city shelters full around the city and without the resources to rent a space, the families at the park felt stuck.
When asked about the situation the Port of San Diego, which has jurisdiction over the park, cited Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent order calling on state and local agencies to get rid of encampments on public property. The park closes at 10:30 p.m., according to port rules.
“We hear and share the community’s concerns about this challenging issue, and our response is to approach it with as much compassion and humanity as we can,” said Brianne Mundy Page, a spokesperson for the Port. “At the same time and as the issue grows, we recognize that, while complicated and sensitive, it is our responsibility to park users, including residents in Barrio Logan and surrounding communities, to protect public access and use of the park as well as public health and public safety.”
The Port did not offer a specific timeline for when action would be taken beyond notifying the families, but notices given to the families indicated that arrest or forced removal could be coming soon.
Though the county has received federal money to do more to receive and shelter migrants, it doesn’t yet have its new space up and running. It’s also not clear whether the county’s plans would help asylum seekers who have nowhere to go. Previously, the county spent money faster than it planned, and many organizations who have long supported asylum seekers in the area criticized its contract practices.
Though the father from Nicaragua, his wife and three daughters crossed into the United States more than a year ago, they still do not have work permits, he said. Work permits can often take months or years to obtain under government rules for asylum seekers.
“How is it possible when one wants to maintain oneself but the permits don’t come?” he said. “There’s plenty of work, but the first thing they ask for is your social security number.”
He and his wife faced persecution under the Ortega regime, which has imprisoned, tortured or killed many for speaking out. They spent months trying to travel through Mexico on the notoriously dangerous train known as la bestia only to be caught by Mexican officials and sent back south. They faced robbery and kidnapping along the way, he said.
After they finally made it to San Diego last year, they spent months at the San Diego Rapid Response Network shelter run by Jewish Family Service, the father said. But, they didn’t have anyone to receive them in the United States, and eventually, they had to leave the shelter.
When asked about the family’s situation, Michael Hopkins, CEO of Jewish Family Service of San Diego, said that the organization doesn’t have contact with people once they are no longer in the shelter’s care.
“The vast majority of families and individuals who are eligible for our care stay to receive assistance, with some opting out or exiting early,” Hopkins said. “Our goal has always been to provide the best possible respite shelter services and then work with partners locally and nationally to support the small percentage (less than 2%) of guests who do not have points of contact in the U.S.”
When the Nicaraguan family left the shelter, they were sent to another shelter in Riverside where they were told they would be able to stay until they got on their feet, the father said. Then a couple of weeks later, they found out they had to leave there as well.
They ended up at Cesar Chavez Park about a month ago, the man said.
On Wednesday morning, Harbor Police told the asylum seekers that they had to leave by 10 p.m., the father and several others said. The families panicked.
Wednesday afternoon, the father stood in front of his tent, sorting through clothes and other items to decide what to try to keep and what to throw away in case they were forced out. He said his family has struggled with stress and insomnia since the police gave them the first notice. Even before that, they were working through intense symptoms associated with trauma.
“I understand that there has to be a protocol, and we have to follow rules,” he said. “We’re just asking for an opportunity to get out of here, just a little push to move forward. We didn’t expect to arrive and have a house. We expected to work.”
He said forcing families to leave the park wouldn’t solve the problem.
“It will be a chain,” he said. “We’ll end up in another park and another park.”
He said it was the TV stations’ negative coverage that pushed police to force them out. He worried that white nationalists or other xenophobic groups would show up to harass them at the park because of the news coverage.
His family’s tent was one of just over a dozen in the community that lined the edges of one end of the park.
A few tents down the row, a Venezuelan mother coaxed her youngest son to eat a piece of fruit.
“I don’t want to be in this situation, but it’s what I’ve had to live through,” she said.
The woman, who recently learned that she is pregnant with her fourth child, said she’d been living in the park with her husband and three boys since early July. She said they left Venezuela at the beginning of the year due to lack of basic necessities such as food and water and the inability to speak out about conditions in the country because of political oppression.
They came to San Diego after waiting about six months in Mexico City for an appointment using the CBP One phone application to request asylum. They initially stayed in one of the city’s migrant shelters, but eventually, after the person who had promised to help them get settled in Houston backed out, the family had to leave the shelter to make room for new arrivals.
She and her husband also don’t have work permits. As soon as they have the permits, the couple said, they will find jobs so that they can rent a home for their family.
In the meantime, the park and the community of asylum seekers living there helped them feel safer.
“At least we have a refuge here,” the man said. “We help each other.”
Because of the families’ panic after the police visit on Wednesday, a local organization temporarily relocated most of them to a hotel for the night. By 10 p.m., the few tents that remained housed adults who did not have children with them. As midnight approached, no police appeared to force anyone to move or make an arrest.
It’s not yet clear how long the families will be able to remain in the hotel. Whenever that time is up, they said, they will likely return to the park.
We as a nation do not have a safety net to prevent people from winding up on the street.
The Mayor and City Council have known about the shelters closing in San Diego for at least a year. The Mayor waits until the last minute to propose a deal and then presents it will no Due Diligence.
The Mayor and Council have been building Market Rate Housing, which does nothing for the homeless problem. Then the Mayor, Council and Governor, throw their hands in the air and say we “Must react to the crisis on our streets for the public good!”
Yes its a crisis, YOU, YOU and YOU made that crisis possible and now you are going to push the homeless off the streets and encampments with no where to go, because YOU, YOU and YOU did not do your jobs.
San Diego’s actions last fall with the Camping Ban killed people due to exposure when their sleeping bags, tents, blankets, winter coats were thrown away. That is now going to be expanded state wide.
Thank you all for your care and compassion.
We as a nation do not have a safety net to prevent people from winding up on the street.
The Mayor and City Council have known about the shelters closing in San Diego for at least a year. The Mayor waits until the last minute to propose a deal and then presents it will no Due Diligence.
The Mayor and Council have been building Market Rate Housing, which does nothing for the homeless problem. Then the Mayor, Council and Governor, throw their hands in the air and say we “Must react to the crisis on our streets for the public good!”
Yes its a crisis, YOU, YOU and YOU made that crisis possible and now you are going to push the homeless off the streets and encampments with no where to go, because YOU, YOU and YOU did not do your jobs.
San Diego’s actions last fall with the Camping Ban killed people due to exposure when their sleeping bags, tents, blankets, winter coats were thrown away. That is now going to be expanded state wide.
Thank you all for your care and compassion.
Well, it seems rather irresponsible to walk a thousand or more miles to one of the most expensive cities in all of the USA with no plan whatsoever. Evidently socialism wasn’t so great after all. Unfortunately for them, delusional Americans are ready to vote for the exact same policies that wrecked Venezuela. Unless something changes soon, the country they arrived in will be just like the one they fled. A smart move by the local shelters helping them would be to advise them to relocate to a place with a lower cost of living. Going to be hard to survive here when the most basic 1-bedroom apartment is over 1000 a month. This is what Biden and Harris voters asked for. Now we have millions of these people all over the country with very little if any plan to be successful filling up shelters and it will be years before many asylum cases will be resolved. Thanks Biden and Harris voters! Are you happy now? You’ve successfully encouraged millions of people to take an enormous risk for little if any benefit.
Well stated, Shawn!
Asylum seekers??? Says who??? They are immigrants sponsored by the Globalists and NGOs, to steak the money of US taxpayers. They are being sponsored and harbored by the Biden Administration and the radical Democrats. Law abiding tax paying US citizens are being pushed aside. The quality of life is being destroyed. This is not a sustainable situation.
Nobody cares, leave the country or you will be removed.
The woman lives in the dirt and can’t feed herself, she has 3 kids and is pregnant with number 4. Do we lack idiocy in this country such that we need to import it?
They, along with the tens of thousands of other Illegal aliens need be sent back to their country of origin.
“…Work permits can often take months or years to obtain under government rules for asylum seekers….”
Suggest issuing immigrants a “temporary SSN” that expires in either two years or at their court hearing …. so that they can support themselves while government processes drag on. Example a letter at the beginning of SSN indicates the month and that it is a “Temporary” visa (A Jan, B Feb,…L Dec) followed by the year “year”. So the first immigrant arriving on the first of August this year would get temporary SSN of “H24-00-0001.
They can always go home.
Send all the illegals back to where they came from…problem solved..!
It is difficult to empathize when you’ve never been in such a desperate situation to make such a radical change. These immigrants have left everyone and everything to give their children a better opportunity than they would otherwise have if they stayed at home. The government, more precisely, the Immigration Customs Enforcement is to blame here. They should give people a chance to work while their immigration status is straightened out.