Title 42 will remain in place until further notice, but that won’t bring much relief to the Regional Center for Border Health in Somerton.
It will continue to screen, house and transport hundreds of asylum seekers every day even with the public health policy in place.
President and CEO Amanda Aguirre discussed RCBH’s role in the influx of undocumented immigrants in a recent interview with KAWC.
Aguirre said she and her team saw the situation and recognized something had to be done.
“We don't have a big bus company or a Greyhound, or a big airport that can take these families to the destinations where they're going,” she said. “Whether it's Miami, New York, we just don't have them, right? So, we just couldn't see folks running going in the streets and wondering where do I go from here?”
The organization’s main mission is public health, RCBH started by screening immigrants for COVID-19, and quarantining those testing positive.
It then tackled the issue of getting asylum seekers to their final destinations.
“We started one with one bus a day and now we have six buses a day, a total of 300 people and we still coordinate everything,” Aguirre said.
And the operation requires significant coordination, since it involves so many agencies, including Border Patrol, ICE, local hospitals, and local first responders.
“We came together, regardless of parties, and discussed this issue together from the one common denominator, a humanitarian response,” Aguirre said.
“If we have a person as coming in, and exhausted, and you know dramatic as it is, the whole trip that they're making from wherever they're coming, could be from Russia, could be from Romania, could be from Ukraine, can be from Bolivia, I mean Haiti, it's just dramatic,” she said.
You can hear more of our conversation with Aguirre in an upcoming KAWC News special report, On Topic: Title 42.
Listen for that special Friday, June 3, at 9 a.m.