Images of migrants on Texas streets in freezing temperatures spark concern

Images of migrants wrapped in blankets and sleeping on the streets of El Paso in freezing temperatures have raised welfare concerns as they circulated online this week amid a surge of people arriving in the west Texan city.

Videos posted online show many migrants lying on the ground at the El Paso section of the border as they await entry to the US. Some have started fires to stay warm in makeshift camps on the riverbank as temperatures dropped below freezing this week.

One video captured by Fox News shows dozens of migrants wrapped in thin blankets, including issued by the Red Cross, as they slept on the streets of downtown El Paso because the strain on shelter beds has been acute as all those available were full. Several people had old cardboard boxes folded into tents to give a modicum of protection from the cold.

Images have also surfaced online of blankets, coats and other belongings abandoned on the Rio Grande bank because many migrants who hand themselves to US federal agents are only allowed to take a small bag of belongings into custody with them.

Many of the migrants who crossed into El Paso this week were part of a group that was kidnapped in Mexico.

Testimony from nine migrants to Reuters suggests there were multiple kidnappings across several days in the northern state of Durango, with people taken to at least two main locations and held against their will while ransoms were demanded.

Most of the kidnapped migrants were Nicaraguans, who have been leaving their homeland in growing numbers to claim asylum and pursue better economic opportunities in the US, encouraged by the knowledge they are unlikely to be immediately deported due to frosty relations between their government and Washington.

In an interview with the Texas Tribune, one migrant, a Nicaraguan fisherman, recounted how he was prepared to spend the night in a parking garage along with several other migrants when a El Paso resident invited him and a few others into her home for the night.