“This country was built on immigration. I’m fine with that,” Silvas, a self-described conservative, told the news outlet. “But not like this. This is ridiculous.” That’s what San Diego resident Brian Silvas told CNN after his land has become a trash pit for illegal immigrants with no where to go.
Silvas and others living outside San Diego near the US-Mexico border say their properties are overrun by migrants. Some of the issues they have to deal with are that migrants chop down their trees for firewood, camp out on their land, and neither the federal nor the local authorities are doing anything to help.
Silva said the flood of migrants crossing from Mexico has increased exponentially since the expiration in May of Title 42 — a COVID-era emergency health authority that allowed US officials to turn away migrants at the border on the grounds of preventing the spread of the virus. The measure was enacted by Trump and ended by Biden.
Another family, Jerry and Maria Shuster, who have lived in Jacumba Hot Springs, about 5 miles east of Silvas’ property along the border, for 40 years, told CNN that migrants coming from Mexico have been using their 17-acre property as a makeshift campsite — and leaving behind tents, bits of clothing and mounds of trash.
Jerry Shuster is an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, said the newcomers had cut down all his trees and dismantled his fence to use as firewood to keep warm at night. His wife, Maria, who was born in Mexico, said she wants the government to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
“Stop it because [the migrants are not] helping us; they’re destroying us,” she lamented. “The migrants have more rights than we do,” said Maria Shuster, claiming that federal authorities and the local sheriff’s department have told her they are unable to remove the hordes of strangers from their property.
The New York Post writes the migrant crisis along the southern border has become increasingly dire. In November alone, CBP recorded 242,418 encounters — and December is on track to reach a record high, having already surpassed 200,000 encounters, with 10,000 migrants arriving daily.
