Murrieta detention facility seeing increase in migrants following end of Title 42

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. - Several Inland Empire communities are being impacted by the end of Title 42 as immigrants are being dropped off at federal detention facilities.

Riverside County is the only non-border county in the country receiving drop-offs from border officials.  

The federal holding facility in Murrieta is one of three in Riverside County receiving immigrants arriving from the US-Mexico border in large numbers.

"Just a few weeks ago we were receiving 50 or so a day. We are now up over two hundred a day and we are hopeful that we can continue to manage that as the numbers increase, but we expect we will probably reach a breaking point," said Shane Reichhardt, with the County of Riverside Emergency Management Dept.

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Their bed capacity is 300. Most immigrants stay 48 to 72-hours before they are moved to sponsoring agency shelters, mostly outside the county.

"If we reach capacity, where we are not able to move people out of our system as quickly as they are coming into our system, we will inform Customs and Border Protection. We are hopeful they will be able to reallocate, if not that is going to result in street releases."

The Feds would decide when and where that would happen, which worries many Murrieta residents. 

"I don’t think they should be doing it," said one resident.  

"I am an immigrant myself so I agree we need to have a law that helps those people," added another.   

 "I think they should wait and do it the legal way. I was born in Mexico and I had to wait for the process. And I think everybody should do the same thing," another resident said.