Arizona's sheriff wants help from the state and federal government to deal with asylum-seekers coming to a rural area

Thursday, the sheriff of Arizona's most eastern border county asked state and federal officials for help with the sudden daily release of more than 100 asylum seekers, including families with small children.

At a news conference on Thursday, Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County said, along with other local officials, that the rural area doesn't have shelters or other facilities to help refugees, many of whom are from faraway countries in western Africa and southeast Asia.

Douglas Mayor Donald Huish said, "We don't have any way to house these people." 

The officials said that Customs and Border Protection was too busy with all the new arrivals, so they started letting the refugees into small towns like Douglas and Bisbee on Wednesday and kept doing so on Thursday. Some of them were dropped off at a bus stop in front of a store in Bisbee.

Douglas is a city with about 16,000 people. It is on the border between Arizona and Mexico. Dannels said that the migrants entered the U.S. at other points along the U.S.-Mexico border, but he didn't say where or why they were released in rural Cochise County.

Yuma County is in the far west of Arizona, right on the border with Mexico. In 2021, when Border Patrol stations were full, migrants were sent to Yuma County.