YUMA, Arizona — The COVID-19 pandemic is officially over, and so is the controversial health policy. title 42 This allowed the United States to refuse and deport immigrants trying to enter the United States at the southern border.

There are gaps in the fence along that perimeter, but they are not the only holes.

The site, near Yuma, is a kind of makeshift asylum center where border patrols pick up would-be asylum seekers and bring them to the city of Yuma.

A flood of people. 12 News cameras watched hundreds of people being unloaded, loaded onto buses and taken into town for processing.

Local nonprofits are helping these immigrants seeking asylum to complete their journey to the United States.

This non-profit organization is called the Border Health Regional Center. And 12News interviewed CEO Amanda Aguirre, who said she needed to stand up for a “humanitarian response.”

This is the next step in a difficult journey for thousands of immigrants who find themselves in gaps in Yuma County’s border fence.

The center in Somerton, a town south of Yuma, is no refuge. But there are no such things nearby, and here immigrants are given food, water, and medicine, and can catch buses and planes to Phoenix to get where they need to go.

The center’s goal is to keep people off the streets of Yuma County. It can process 700 cases per day. But by Friday, Yuma Mayor Doug Nichols said he expected too many people passing through here to be handled or moved, and some would be thrown onto the streets.

“We expected to have more resources, more attention, more capacity to manage more situations at the federal level than we have ever had,” Nichols said.

After all, America is at a crossroads, at a crossroads with no clear way forward.

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Get the latest news and updates on 12News coverage of the US-Mexico border.