YUMA COUNTY, AZ — One by one, busses bound for Phoenix are loaded. Migrants are catching flights at Sky Harbor to stay with family in other cities.
They may be headed for different places, but they're all facing the same unfamiliar, uncertain future as they begin their quest for asylum — just like Celso Diaz, who've come from Peru with two small children.
"My daughter was saying to me, 'where are we going, Dad?'" said Diaz. "I told her we are going to a new place where can start all over again."
That fresh start is what is motivating many of these migrants. Diaz says work is hard to come by in Peru, but there is another factor motivating this family.
"My son needs therapies that are expensive - speech therapy for the autism."
It's a move the Diaz family was willing to make, coming here with just the clothes on their backs, but it doesn't mean the decision was easy.
Diaz's wife Sylvia explained it is very difficult. She said she thinks about what she's left behind — her cultural traditions, her house, her family — she said they've left it all behind to have a better future for her kids.
"How can we not help or open our hearts to help those families in despair?" asked Amanda Aguirre, the president and CEO of the Regional Center for Border Health in Somerton.
What normally is a public health resource in this community has expanded to serve as a transition center for the U.S. Border Patrol. Aguirre says there's simply nowhere else in Yuma County for these migrants to go.
"It's quite an operation. Feeding, taking care of medical needs, getting the demographics, making sure the flights are being booked. We don’t have shelters in Yuma so our goal is to get people to their final destination as soon as possible."
But each day, they're getting closer to and closer to capacity. On Thursday, ABC15 was told they bussed nearly 800 migrants.
Davis Rodriguez, who came from Colombia with his three kids, said it’s been difficult because you don’t know what you'll find on the other side
Rodriguez says his family is escaping extreme violence. He showed the scars and wounds on his arm and says a group in Colombia targeted him, smashing his windshield while he was still inside the car.
He will board a bus to Phoenix where he'll take a flight to Salt Lake City to stay with family as he awaits a decision from an immigration judge on his asylum request.
He said, "You have to hold onto hope - or else you'll block yourself from getting the things you want in life and I want to create a good future for my kids."
