Mental Health Crisis Grows In Border Camps Filled With Hopeless, Depressed Migrants

“They’ll call me at midnight, two, three o’clock in the morning, and I’ll stay on the phone with them for hours just trying to calm the situation down.”

By Reynaldo Leaños Jr.January 21, 2020 9:30 am, , , ,

From Texas Public Radio:

Hundreds of red, blue and orange tents are scattered around the Gateway International Bridge that connects Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico, where more than 2,000 asylum seekers live. Children with their families have endured heat, cold and inclement weather for months. Such conditions are grinding down migrants’ mental health.

Kelly Escobar is with Love Without Lines and has volunteered at the tent encampment, where she provided supplies and assistance to the migrants.

“I’ve seen mental health declining rapidly, especially with people being denied asylum,” she says.

Aid workers are worried about a growing mental health crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border as thousands of migrants are camped out in Mexican border towns, waiting for weeks and months for their day in U.S. immigration court under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.

More than 57,000 asylum seekers have been sent back to Mexico under the policy.

Read more.