Convention Center set up as first 'emergency influx site' in California

The San Diego Convention Center was set up to accept about 500 girls between the ages of 13-17 which are unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the United States.

The convention center will be used over the next 30-35 days to provide temporary shelter, Mayor Todd Gloria said on Saturday, March 27.

The center will accept no more than 1,400 children.

"This is a temporary emergency posture," Gloria said. "We want to make it clear that we are a welcoming city."

The mayor said they're not just supplying cots. The shelter will include educational and recreational services, meals, hygiene, medical services, legal help and a safe place to stay while the children await unification with family or sponsors in the United States.

"These are children, this is the right thing to do," Gloria said.

Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, said the temporary shelter at the convention center is not the answer to immigration reform.

"Everyone here agrees this not a perfect system," Peters said.

"Today we're just offering compassion from neighbor to neighbor."

The vice chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisor, Nora Vargas, said San Diego is a welcoming community and the opening of the convention center to children was showing how "the government is working for people who need our help."

A group from Patriot Fire also gathered nearby Saturday at a rally to protest the opening of the convention center to house unaccompanied minors.

Patriot Fire issued a statement Saturday saying their rally was held to protest "mass asylum fraud and the associated child-human trafficking in San Diego. Hundreds of homeless Americans will be booted out of the convention center and replaced by the trafficked juveniles and children, starting on Saturday. This will be a peaceful, free-speech street rally."

Patriot Fire believes the new Biden administration open border policies have encouraged the crisis at the border that encouraged people to come or send their children on the dangerous journey with coyotes. The U.S. has seen over 100,000 people crossing illegally just in February 2021. The United Nations estimated that among women crossing without husbands or families, as many as 70% were victims of some form of abuse.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières gives medical and mental health care to migrants and refugees fleeing violence in Central America and traveling through Mexico.

The migrants and refugees are "preyed upon by criminal organizations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses," including abduction, theft, extortion, torture and rape, the group reported. There's no exception for children.

Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, said he noticed the group of protesters as he was arriving at the convention center.

County officials said the convention center was the first "emergency influx site" in California.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is operating the shelter and is contracting with local providers for supportive services.