SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — President Biden’s executive order for the border raises some fears for immigration advocates.
“The worry is, I mean, it’s always great out there. No matter the time of the year,” James Cordero of Border Kindness said.
Cordero is the water drop coordinator for Border Kindness, a non-profit that provides humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the border in this terrain.
“We expect that the numbers of people crossing through in between the ports of entry in the dangerous areas of the mountains and deserts; it’s going to increase. And we’ve seen that time and time again when [there's] policies like this put in place,” Cordero said.
That policy is President Biden’s executive order cutting down on asylum seekers at the border.
Cordero told ABC 10News that major worries for those crossing through those routes come with that mandate.
“Terrain and the environment, the weather. Right now, we are in the beginning part of June. We’re having this heat dome over the Southwest region right now,” Cordero said.
In late May, the Border Patrol showed ABC 10News some dangerous routes migrants take.
Agents showed ABC 10News how their emergency crews responded to medical situations, adding that 23 migrants have died this year trying to cross the border.
Outside of the troubles of this terrain, the first worry Cordero mentioned is organized crime.
“That happens all the time. That happens, you know, every year, you know, that a certain number of border deaths are caused due to that,” Cordero said. “Migrants are targets by organized crime to do work and also because they have few resources some of the time.”
Cordero told ABC 10News the increase along these routes won’t look like the mass of migrants to different parts of the border.
“In these types of you know farther, you know, more remote areas you’re not going to see anything like that in those large numbers. It’s too dangerous, it’s too obvious,” Cordero said.
He and Border Kindness have been preparing for an uptick in folks taking these routes, given how close we are to November.
“We didn’t know it’d be this exact thing that the President did, but we knew there would be some sort of shift, some sort of policy put in place during the election season that would cause people to take to the mountains and desert to risk their lives to try to get through,” Cordero said.
