An Indiana community is pleading for help from the federal government after up to 2,000 migrants from at least 28 countries flocked to the city of 18,000 people — overwhelming the local health system and making the roads dangerous.
Many migrants have arrived in Logansport as unaccompanied minors — putting a strain on the schools and increasing the population of Haitian migrant students by nearly 15-fold in just three years.
Locals are asking how the migrants are getting there — and why they chose to relatively remote city 90 minutes north of Indianapolis.
Logansport resident Dave Price told Fox News Wednesday that the city is used to new arrivals — with Mexican immigrants coming to the community and making a home there years earlier.
“But what we’re seeing now is a little different. It’s coming from a Third World country coming into Logansport,” he said. “And these individuals don’t necessarily know the local laws or rules and how to behave here, basically.
“And we just ask that our local leaders, state and federal, take a look at Logansport, Indiana.”
Logansport is now part of a growing list of small-town communities where the local population is struggling to deal with a huge influx of migrants as a result of Biden-Harris administration policies. Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, previously made headlines for the same level.
“The federal government has got to step in and help communities our size,” Mayor Chris Martin recently told FOX 59 Indianapolis.
In Logansport, the effects are being felt by the community at nearly every level.
Not even Martin knows the exact number of migrant arrivals to Logansport. One local business owner who sells to the Haitian community estimates that 2,000 migrants have arrived in the last few years.
Martin told The Post that the influx has led to a 20% to 30% increase in demand for hospital services.
Traffic violations have also increased, the result of newly arrived migrants failing to follow US driving rules, he said.
“We are a small rural community in Indiana who is facing challenges of a large increase in population,” said Martin.
“We’re past this idea that we can somehow prevent people from coming into our community.”
One of the major draws for the new migrant arrivals is believed to be the Tyson meatpacking plant, according to FOX59.
Some of the migrants have work permits through the federal government’s Temporary Protected Status, which shields certain migrants from certain nations — including Haiti and Venezuela — from deportation if the conditions in their home country are dire enough.
Logansport Memorial Hospital is expecting to see a record number of births and has had more than 20,000 emergency room visits, while 27% of the patients they see are on Medicaid, according to Fox 59.
The hospital received $3 million from the local Cass County Council as their needs have increased with the closures of nearby clinics and more migrant arrivals.
Local schools have also been affected.
Migrant children, many of them arriving without parents, have also overwhelmed the local school system, with 150 new students enrolling in the last three years.
Logansport schools currently have 207 students from Haiti, up from the 14 Haitians enrolled in 2021 — in addition to new students from 11 other countries, according to Fox 59.
“A lot of them are coming unaccompanied,” Cass County Health Department Administrator Serenity Alter previously said of the students.
The schools have also had to accommodate more migrant children who are working to support their families by working overnight shifts. The high school now offers the opportunity to attend part-time.
“They fly from Haiti to Nicaragua, to Mexico, and then to the state they are flying to in the US,” Alter told Fox 59. “Some have not seen their parents in seven years. It’s an eye-opener.”
“I don’t think our school system can sustain what they are doing right now,” she added.
Meanwhile, residents of the small town are fed up and have been echoing the mayor’s calls for federal action.
“Logansport is just not used to [this]. We had immigrants come in throughout the years to Logansport from the Mexico area, so we have a lot of Hispanics in the area which have acclimated very well, and they’ve grown their businesses, and they’ve earned the respect of Americans, and we’ve respected them in return,” Logansport resident Dave Price told Fox News Wednesday.