Volunteers bring donations to hundreds of migrants at border in Jacumba

By Natalie Chuck

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    JACUMBA, California (KGTV) — As temperatures hit about 90-degrees in Jacumba on Sunday, hundreds of migrants waited underneath the hot sun after crossing into America from Mexico.

With the help of a volunteer willing to translate the conversation, one migrant told ABC 10News “if she would have known the situation, she wouldn’t have risked her kids or herself.”

The woman from Colombia came to the United States with her husband and two young daughters.

She says her safety was at risk in Colombia, but she was told as soon as she entered America “things would be better.”

This mother was not expecting to be sitting in an East County desert for five days with little food or water.

This circumstance is similar to the other migrants in Jacumba who are also waiting to be processed.

The woman told us her family took two plane rides to get to Tijuana before paying a guide $400 to get them to the border.

“This is like nothing like we’ve ever seen,” said Jeffrey Osborne, who lives in Jacumba and is spearheading the effort to provide the migrants with resources.

Osborne says he initially got word of migrants at the border on Thursday. He drove there to see it for himself.

“People sprawled out through the desert with, kind of, make-shift shelters with sticks and other things, with no services whatsoever,” said Osborne, describing what he witnessed.

Now, an out-of-commission gas station a few miles away from where the migrants are staying is flooded with donations from community members — everything from water bottles to drink, to tarps used for shelter.

Each day, volunteers load multiple cars with donations and hand them out at the border, eliciting cheers from migrants who have been sleeping on American soil.

“Yesterday when we got here and dropped off their food, they hadn’t had no meals at all,” said the volunteer who helped translate for the mother 10News spoke to.

Roughly 100 migrants were taken by U.S. Customs and Borer Protection on Sunday afternoon, but hundreds more remain there to wait another day hoping to be processed in the near future.

If you want to donate to the migrants, this Instagram page is updated daily with a list of items people need.

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