Hundreds of migrants living in San Diego airport as California battles 'unimaginable' homeless crisis
El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells said Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration are doing "nothing" to help as thousands of migrants flood his community.
Hundreds of migrants have taken up residence in the San Diego International Airport with "no place to go" as California shelters are filled to capacity with the state's homeless population.
The mayor of El Cajon, California, called out state and federal government officials Tuesday for policies burdening his community.
"California has basically made it completely un-criminal to be homeless in California. And because of that, there's no places in the shelters. There's no places in the hospitals. There's no place for them to go at all. And then you add to this new migrant crisis and things get out of control and people have nowhere to go," Mayor Bill Wells told "FOX & Friends First."
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Over 300 migrants have been hunkering down at the airport in recent days waiting for flights out of the Golden State, which has a homeless population of approximately 172,000.
Wells said the San Diego area has been inundated with 42,000 migrants over the past two-and-a-half months, leading to "street releases" in his community.
"This is exacerbating our already unimaginable homeless crisis, which California has created," Wells said.
"The county of San Diego recently spent $3 million on a migrant shelter that was supposed to last several months. They're running out of money after the second month. And this is local money that should be used to help local people. But this is obviously not helping whatsoever," he added.
The mayor claimed his town had received "nothing" from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom or the Biden administration, and instead has been "gaslit" about the situation.
"There's almost no communication, there's certainly no plans to help anybody," he said. "Mayorkas, he should be doing something about this. He should be stopping people crossing the border. But he's not doing his job. Governor Newsom is doing nothing to help the problem. Just a lot of rhetoric and happy talk about how things are going to be great."
"They're telling you there's no problem, there's no problem with the border, everything's under control, where our own eyes can tell us that there is everything but no problem, it is a significant problem," he said.
SBCS, the nonprofit that manages the San Diego Welcome Center, is running several buses from its facility to the airport each day, the New York Post reported.
A SBSC spokesperson denied that migrants are being sent to the airport several days before their scheduled departures, telling the San Diego Union-Tribune that migrants are required to show they have a flight booked for the same or next day before being transported.