BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Border Report) — A migrant shelter in this border town has closed after a sudden decrease in asylum seekers due to new immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration.
“It’s affected what we do because we aren’t seeing anyone come across anymore,” said Kathy Harrington, a board member of the nonprofit organization Team Brownsville, which was among NGOs that helped migrants for years at the Welcome Center in downtown Brownsville.
The Welcome Center shut down after President Donald Trump took office.
Now the doors to the facility are locked and the rooms are empty.
Hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers received free meals, clothes, travel advice, and hugs and encouragement from the Welcome Center, which operated for the past three years across from the city’s bus station.
But Team Brownsville founder Andrea Rudnik says the drop in number of migrants who need help on this side of the border, only increases the need for her group to continue to cross south of the border to help those who need help in Mexico.
“What we try to do is meet the needs of the people that are living in shelters in in Matamoros and in Reynosa. We work with NGOs, with asociaciones civiles, with organizations like Casa Migrante that still serve people that are there. And so we try to find out what the needs are, and then we try to mee t some of those needs, we work with other partners, and we come up with a plan,” Rudnik told Border Report Wednesday.
The nonprofit formed in 2019 when the first Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Program, also called Remain in Mexico, that forced asylum seekers to remain south of the border during their immigration proceedings. Team Brownsville volunteers went daily delivering food, toiletries and partnered with other organizations to offer healthcare and legal advice to help the thousands living in outdoor encampments in Matamoros for months on end.
Standing at the border wall overlooking the Gateway International Bridge and the Mexican town of Matamoros on Wednesday, Rudnik and Harrington said Matamoros is eerily quiet lately with few migrants on the streets.
Next to the bridge, Mexican officials are constructing a facility that many believe is to be used to handle large numbers of migrants who Trump promises will be deported from the United States.
Buses also are in border towns ready to take migrants to Mexico City, Border Report has learned.
But some don’t want to go.
About 250 people are living at a shelter that once was a Matamoros hospital a 10-minute drive from the border. Many had CBP One app asylum appointments that were canceled after the Trump administration ended the program.
Team Brownsville volunteers regularly deliver toiletries, clothing and other donations to help them. And that’s their way of helping now, since the Welcome Center has closed.
They also give supplies and donations to other nonprofits that are crossing the border into Mexico to deliver.
Team Brownsville accepts donations on its website.
“So we can’t personally interact with people and give them things, but we still are doing it through in kind donations and taking it into Matamoros or Reynosa,” Harrington said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week reported nearly a 50% drop in encounters of immigrants crossing the Southwest border in January from December.
Trump took office Jan. 20, so the data reflects less than two weeks under his immigration policies. Immigration experts expect the numbers to drop much more for February — the first full month of his term.
“It’s affected everybody, all the NGOs, all, of course, the asylum seekers, everybody. It’s touched everybody,” Harrington said. “People are not crossing now, because of all the rules that have changed. They’re not allowed across the border.”
“People have to come up with a new plan as to how they’re going to go on with the rest of their lives, what they’re going to do. We’ve been told that some may move to another city, some may actually apply for asylum in Mexico. There may be others that make different decisions to go to other countries that they feel are safer than their original their home country,” Rudnik said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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