More than 300 migrants hunker down at San Diego airport

The San Diego International Airport has become overrun with migrants waiting for flights out of the area — with more than 300 hunkering down there last week, including some who sat on the floor for days.

“It’s grown exponentially, and we’re not totally sure why,” said Krystle Johnson, a volunteer with We All We Got, to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“It’s almost becoming a second [migrant welcome] center because there’s so many people there,” she said of the airport.

Volunteers say the situation has gotten worse in recent weeks.

Roni Elias, another volunteer for We All We Got, said the organization had typically been bringing 50 sandwiches and meal packs to migrants at the airport, but when she handed them out last week, she realized that wasn’t close to enough.

Elias told WKRG she counted 308 people sleeping at the airport last week.

SBCS, the nonprofit that manages the San Diego Welcome Center, is running several buses from its facility to the airport each day.

Some volunteers have even suggested that the migrants are being transported straight to the airport after being processed by the US Border Patrol.

In a statement to the Union-Tribune, airport officials acknowledged, “Since late last year, San Diego International Airport has experienced a significant increase in the number of migrants using the airport to proceed to their next destination.

“We have and will continue to coordinate with migrant-serving volunteer groups and nonprofit organizations as they help their clients navigate the airport.”

Almost 20 of the migrants arriving each day do not have a flight booked, said Immigrant Defenders Law Center managing attorney Paulina Reyes.

About half are able to find a flight by the end of the day, she said, but there are a few cases where migrant families are waiting three or four nights at the airport while they wait for a family member to purchase a ticket.

Others had a flight booked but were sent to the airport days before it was scheduled to depart.

SBCS spokeswoman Mindy Wright has denied the claim.

She told the Union-Tribune that before any of the busloads of migrants head to the airport, the staff requires migrants to show they have a flight booked for either that day or the next.

The city is struggling to deal with the surge in migrants coming from the southern border.

More than 40,000 migrants have been processed by Border Patrol agents and released into San Diego County since mid-September.

The asylum seekers are then sent to a transitional center, which could soon run out of money.

County officials allocated $3 million in October for its operation, but it is unclear when or if it might receive additional funding.

“As a county, we did everything we could to reallocate some funding, but at this time, I need the federal government to do their part,” San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas said as she invited federal and state officials to tour the facility earlier this month, according to 10 News.