The REALITY of America's migrant crisis in pictures trends now
The pictures say it all: America is overwhelmed.
At the southern border, migrants camp out in a muddy no-man's land between California and Mexico.
Some 2,500 miles away, buses crammed with migrants leave Manhattan through bridges and tunnels — an effort by struggling New York City officials to shift the problem to smaller cities upstate.
Immigration monitors predicted a surge of migrants when pandemic-era entry restrictions lapsed earlier this month.
It did not materialize, but millions of asylum seekers and other migrants without papers had already entered the country.
Some had packed possessions into plastic bags and waded through the Rio Grande river, carrying children on their shoulders.
Migrants cross the Rio Grande River to enter the US, in Matamoros, Mexico, as pandemic-era rules came to an end
After crossing the Rio Grande river, migrants await processing by US immigration officials during a vicious sandstorm in El Paso
Border Patrol officers processing immigrants in Yuma, Arizona
Migrants put their arms between the bars of the wall to grab the food delivered by volunteers. Some 400 migrants, all families, were camped out on US soil in the no man's land between Tijuana and San Diego after crossing the border illegally
Mexican National Guard soldiers and local police put on a show of force along the Rio Grande river border in Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico
From coast to coast, sanctuary cities are struggling to shelter the new arrivals.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week asked a judge to let the city suspend its obligation to shelter any homeless migrants.
About 70,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the Big Apple since last spring – mostly folks who traveled up to the US overland through Mexico.
The city spends $8 million a day to house the 37,500 asylum seekers in shelters.
Adams has called on President Joe Biden and the White House to stump up cash for America's cities.
Biden has 'failed this city,' he said last month, in an unusual rebuke from one Democrat to another.
The cash-strapped mayor has even started sending migrants upstate to destinations like Newburgh.
People board a bus outside New York City's Roosevelt Hotel, a disused landmark that's used for processing an unusually large number of migrants
Parents and community members chant as they march around P.S. 189 in Upper Manhattan to protest New York City Mayor Eric Adam's plan to temporarily house immigrants in the school's gymnasium
Migrants from African countries like Burkina Faso, Egypt and Mauritania, in Newburgh, after being relocated from New York City
Among them is 19-year-old Mohammed, an asylum seeker from Mauritania who entered overland from the US.
'It's like the desert,' Mohamed said of the small city on the Hudson River, where he struggles to find work.
'There's nothing here for us.'
Though thieves ransacked Mohamed's few remaining possessions when he stayed at an overcrowded 40-bed shelter in Brooklyn, he wants to return to New York.
'There, no one cursed at you and said 'go back to your country',' he told AP.
The plight of migrants was spotlighted this week by the death of a four-month-old in a Manhattan hotel that's now used to shelter for migrants.
The baby girl arrived in the US from Ecuador in January with her family. Her death is under investigation.
The crisis could be even worse in Chicago, some 800 miles to the west.
There, cash-strapped officials said they cannot afford to rent hotel rooms for all arriving migrants and asked for more federal funding.
The shelters of America's third-biggest city are so overwhelmed that migrants have slept in police stations.
With nowhere else to turn, newcomers have set down mattresses in cop shops for a safe place to rest.
A father from Venezuela feeds his 15-month-old son in the lobby of a police station where they have been staying with other migrant families since their arrival to Chicago, Illinois
Migrants receive supplies outside the District 12 station of the Chicago Police Department in Chicago, Illinois
Immigrants from Venezuela rest in the lobby of a police station where they've been staying since their arrival to Chicago, Illinois, earlier this month
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Tomas Orozco, 55, recently arrived in Chicago with his family.
They reached the US after an arduous seven-week journey from their home country, Venezuela.
They even passed through the notorious Darien Gap, a treacherous stretch
