Posted on June 9, 2014

Planes Carrying 130 Undocumented Immigrants Land in El Paso

Luis Carlos Lopez, El Paso Times, June 7, 2014

Two planes carrying undocumented families apprehended in South Texas arrived in El Paso Saturday, officials said.

Ramiro Cordero, spokesman for the Border Patrol El Paso sector, said two flights carrying 130 people landed in El Paso.

He said the immigrants would be processed at different locations in the El Paso sector.

Monsignor Arturo Bañuelas, pastor of St. Pius X Parish in El Paso, said the immigrants arrived in the morning.

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Annunciation House is planning a news conference Monday to discuss how it plans to help the undocumented families who will be released from immigration processing centers and transferred to El Paso.

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Bañuelas said they would collect cots, food and money for the immigrant families who will arrive in El Paso and then travel elsewhere.

The immigrants released in the U.S., including those in El Paso, will have to report to immigration officials within 15 days as directed by federal authorities, the Associated Press reported.

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On Saturday, Maria, who preferred not to give her last name and the names of her two daughters, stopped at the El Paso Greyhound station Downtown.

Maria is a Guatemalan undocumented immigrant. She said she was too nervous to remember dates and details of how and where she was detained.

She added that she was on her way to Tennessee to reunite with her sister.

Maria said that before being released from immigration custody, immigration officials communicated with her sister to arrange travel plans to Tennessee.

“Immigration told me, ‘You are free, you can leave,’ ” Maria said.

She added that she left Guatemala on May 25 and that she was arrested on Thursday. Maria, who said she did not have any money for food for family, said she was found in the desert and that she was still nervous about traveling.

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