According to Michael Hopkins, the JFS chief executive officer, at any given time 700 asylum seekers, mostly families with young children, are in the care of his agency. Their average stay in San Diego is about three days, during which time they are expected to remain in their undisclosed hotel locations both for health and security reasons.

The parking lot program aims to reach people who have recently become homeless and prevent them from falling into a downward spiral of homelessness. Olsen said that 92 percent of the people who stayed in the lot Wednesday night were first-time homeless people and 50 percent were people with a job who were having trouble finding affordable replacement housing. Forty-six percent were age 60 or older.

“I think there is a myth in the community — much like such other types of issues like substance abuse, mental illness, and homelessness — that poverty doesn’t impact our Jewish community, but the reality is that we experience it at the same rate as our general community,” Yellen said. And that, Yellen added, “has been exacerbated every moment of the pandemic.” Jewish Family Service’s newly launched Center for Jewish Care is making sure that Jewish members of our community have a professional resource to turn to for help and a path becoming stable.

Sometimes, that means stabilizing people so they’re ready to travel on to a final destination. Kate Clark, Sr. Director of Immigration Services at JFS, shares how we transformed our Migrant Shelter Services during COVID-19.

CEO Michael Hopkins discusses how Jewish Family Service is preparing to welcome new refugees to San Diego. From preparing to have a home ready for them to recruiting volunteers, JFS is already gearing up for incoming families.

The guaranteed basic income idea was tested in Stockton in 2019 and received widespread national attention. Jewish Family Service of San Diego is leading a pilot program for low-income neighborhoods of San Diego and National City.

Thank you to JFS supporter Neil Senturia for advancing JFS as the beneficiary of the bidding of his witty and insightful article about NFTs. You will have to read the article for this all to make sense. Senturia is a serial entrepreneur who invests in early-stage technology companies. Hear his weekly podcast on innovation and entrepreneurship at www.imthereforyoubaby.com.

Immigration authorities are working with state and local authorities and non-governmental organizations to ensure that all migrants are tested. Jewish Family Service of San Diego shares when migrants are tested on the California border.

Carole Yellen, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships for Jewish Family Service of San Diego, said “volunteers like Ezra demonstrate that you are never too young to make a big impact.”

Dana Toppel, Chief Operating Officer at JFS, authors this opinion that advocates for continuing the impact of the Child Tax Credit by investing in Guaranteed Income pilots. Studies show that direct cash “significantly reduces the experience of child poverty and creates an income floor that lifts families up and out of poverty.” Dana is a Community Advisory Board Member of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Jewish Family Service receives families and adults who are coming into the United States from the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program as well as asylum seekers released by Border Patrol into San Diego.

In this video segment, we learn more about migrant families at the border from dangerous conditions, confusing policies, to never letting go of hope. Eitan Peled, JFS Border Services Advocate, is interviewed.

As the Biden administration urges people not to migrate north to the U.S. border, the situation for asylum seekers who have been waiting at the border is a situation of growing confusion. Kate Morrissey of The San Diego Union Tribune reports the situation and details the increased arrival numbers we are experiencing in this Sunday frontpage article. Morrissey writes, “Many of these migrants, particularly Cubans, have been released to the Jewish Family Service shelter (services), amplifying a need for more volunteers and more staff to safely manage the new arrivals.”

A Q&A with Jewish Family Service of San Diego’s Kate Clark, senior director of immigration services, about their legal and advocacy work for families seeking asylum in the United States.

Gerson handed the border officer his Honduran passport and placed his fingertips on a small scanner. This was the last hurdle before his family could escape the kidnapping, threats, and extortion they had endured in Mexico while trying to gain asylum in the US. Now, he and hundreds of other asylum-seekers who spent months holding onto a sliver of hope while being forced by the Trump administration to wait in Mexico are entering the US. Kate Clark, the senior director of immigration services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, said the group has taken in nearly 300 people who were previously stuck in Mexico under the Trump administration policy.

Stuck in Mexico for nearly a year under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, asylum seeker Nicholas was finally able to cross into the United States, thanks to an executive order from President Joe Biden. Featuring an interview with CEO Michael Hopkins.

Esperanzas infundadas, siguen llegando inmigrantes a una frontera estadounidense que no se abre; familias separadas en la frontera, una nueva controversia en Estados Unidos; se refuerza la batalla para producir más vacunas para los estadounidenses y el Departamento de Estado emite informe con la clasificación de países que fracasaron en la lucha antidrogas.

After migrants, having traveled thousands of miles, or waited in Mexico for months or years, are met by Jewish Family Service (JFS) in San Diego, a group that is part of the California Welcoming Task Force and the San Diego Rapid Response Network, which supports all migrants that are processed into San Diego before heading to their final destination.”

CEO Michael Hopkins is interviewed in this coverage of the first 25 Latin American asylum seekers who were granted entry at the San Ysidro port of entry and will be allowed to stay in the country for the duration of their proceedings. The Jewish Family Service of San Diego received the asylum applicants, who were required to test negative for the coronavirus, and transported them to a hotel in the area so they could quarantine, according to the non-profit’s chief executive officer, Michael Hopkins. The group included six families and five individuals from Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Cuba.

U.S. unwinds Trump policy making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico CEO Michael Hopkins is interviewed in this article focusing on the first day of asylum-seekers being released from Remain in Mexico and allowed to enter the U.S.

Two years and 21 days after the first asylum seeker was walked back from San Diego to Tijuana under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program, a small group of asylum seekers was escorted in the other direction to wait out immigration court cases in the United States. CEO Michael Hopkins said, “This is a really different experience than 2½ years ago, when we got the call on our hotline that moms and kids were on the streets of San Diego.”

“We applaud the Biden-Harris Administration and we are optimistic that this is the first of many steps to rebuild our immigration system and restore the asylum process,” said JFS and its partners in the San Diego Rapid Response Network.

Un grupo de 25 migrantes que cruzaron por la frontera de San Diego y Tijuana estuvieron entre los primeros solicitantes de asilo que se les permitió entrar a Estados Unidos bajo los nuevos cambios de la administración Biden que comenzaron este viernes.

At least 25 migrants who have been waiting in Mexico for months while they seek asylum in the U.S. have been allowed into the country, part of the Biden administration efforts to roll back the Trump-era policy known as “Remain in Mexico.” CEO Michael Hopkins is interviewed.

A group of 25 asylum seekers was allowed into the United States on Friday, a United Nations official said, the start of efforts to unwind one of former President Donald Trump’s most restrictive immigration policies, which forced thousands to wait in Mexico for their U.S. cases to be heard. Jewish Family Service will provide services to the migrants once they are in the U.S.