‘In less than five months, $6 million of county tax dollars were squandered without tangible results or benefits for our residents,’ said El Cajon’s mayor.
The U.S. Border Patrol began releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants onto the streets of San Diego on Feb. 23, a day after a nonprofit group that was contracted to provide transportation, food, and other basic services for the immigrants ran out of funding and shut down operations.
More than 550 were released Friday morning, a Border Patrol source who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation told The Epoch Times.
The illegal immigrants were transported from a processing facility in Otay Mesa which was at 190 percent overcapacity and released at the Iris transit station in San Ysidro, just north of the border, the source said.
San Diego County has paid $6 million to South Bay Community Services (SBCS) since October to operate a “migrant welcome center” at a closed school in San Diego.
The center shut down on Friday but was still operating on Feb. 22, with a steady stream of vans and buses shuttling illegal immigrants to and from the facility.
A taxi driver, one of three waiting for fares outside the facility on Feb. 22, told the Epoch Times that he often runs the immigrants to the airport, bus stations, and cheap hotels in San Diego area, but he said Thursday was unusually slow for him.
The man, who also asked not to be named, said he still saw bus after bus and van after van transporting people to the site.
Lately, he said, there has been “a lot from China,” he said.
Recently, an illegal immigrant from Senegal claimed that after he had gone three days without food before he arrived, nonprofit staff offered him only an apple and water, the cab driver said.
“He was yelling. He was really angry,” he said.
The organization operated secretively, avoiding media attention, and when they saw news crews on one side of the facility, buses and vans would enter and exit from the opposite side of the gated complex behind blacked out chain-link fences.
By Brad Jones
