Around 150 migrants were bused from the U.S.-Mexico border to downtown Denver on Monday night, prompting officials to quickly open an emergency shelter to house the new arrivals, according to The Denver Post.
Around 100 migrants were housed in the emergency shelter at an unnamed rec center on Tuesday night. By Wednesday, 110 incoming migrants were expected to sleep there, according to a statement from the Denver Office of Emergency Management.
However, authorities are concerned that the shelter is not large enough to house all of the migrants that arrived in the city.
“Last night we housed approximately 50 people at our Lawrence Street downtown shelter,” Denver Rescue Mission spokesman Stephen Hinkel said Wednesday. “And then we transported 100 to the rec center.”
The migrants were dropped off at the city’s Union Station, where the main public bus terminal is located. According to Hinkel, the migrants then walked several blocks until they reached the Rescue Mission.
“That is definitely where the buses were dropped off,” Hinkel said. “What we are assuming, based on our conversations with the immigrants, is they got off the buses and were looking for services and were directed to the Denver Rescue Mission’s front doors.”
Denver authorities, however, remain unsure about how or where the migrants arrived, The Denver Post added. According to the spokeswoman for the Regional Transportation District, Marta Sipeki, they were not aware of any migrants arriving at the station by bus.
Denver has been receiving a steady stream of migrants over the past few months. However, the influx was small enough that the city could accommodate the migrants in the city’s shelter system, said Mikayla Ortega, spokeswoman for the emergency management office.
“They reached out to us and sent up the flag. ‘They said we need your help.’ That was yesterday morning,” Ortega said on Wednesday. “That was when we activated the emergency shelter to accommodate the overload.”
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