As many as 100 people are expected to caravan from Los Angeles to Port Hueneme Tuesday afternoon to rally in support of the immigrant children temporarily housed at a Naval Base Ventura County shelter.
The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Central American Resource Center, United Methodist Church and other immigrant rights advocates will gather at the corner of Ventura and Pleasant Valley roads around noon to call for transparency of the shelter's conditions.
One hour into the rally, Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, and other members of the California Latino Legislative Caucus will be escorted through the 42,000 square-foot converted warehouse on a 40-minute tour to inspect living conditions.
Since the housing facility opened at the beginning of June, the shelter has been home to more than 1,200 immigrant teenagers — primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras — apprehended illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent.
There were 470 13- to 17-year-olds living Monday at the shelter that was one of three temporary shelters opened throughout the country to help cope with the influx of unaccompanied children crossing the southwest border.
Customs and Border Patrol detained 24,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border in 2013. By May, that number had reached 47,000, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
"The recent surge of unaccompanied minors is an issue that goes beyond the debate of our nation's flawed immigration system," Alejo said in an email. "This is a question of whether or not we ought to take proper care of helpless children with no one to turn to."
Unaccompanied minors detained at the border are placed in deportation proceedings, but the Department of Homeland Security transfers custody of immigrants under age 18 to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The department's Administration for Children and Families provides short-term housing until the children can be placed with a family member or sponsor in the U.S. leading up to their immigration court hearing — a process that Ventura-based immigration lawyer Vanessa Frank said can take more than two years.
Over 740 immigrant children have already been temporarily housed and discharged at the Port Hueneme shelter, according to Administration for Children and Families spokesman Kenneth Wolfe.
Tuesday's local rally comes one week after buses transporting migrant children and families had to be rerouted to San Diego for processing after protesters bearing American flags blocked the path to the Murrieta U.S. Border Patrol Station.
"We want to be there and be a counterpoint to Murrieta to show that there are people that support the children," National Day Laborer Organizing Network spokesman B. Loewe said. "These are people escaping violence and are in need of help."
Loewe said the rally will seek to "welcome the children and ensure they are taken care of instead of dehumanized" by being referred to as a "flood" of people crossing the border and greeted by protesters holding signs reading "return to sender."
"It's clear that California and our country is one that benefits and is built by immigrants," he said. "We're in a place were immigration reform is long overdue."