CBP apprehends 980 migrants crossing into Texas and Arizona
Customs and Border Patrol apprehends 980 migrants crossing into Texas and Arizona
By THERESA BRAINE
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
APR 16, 2019 | 11:30 PM
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A Customs and Border Control agent patrols on the US side of a razor-wire-covered border wall along the Mexico east of Nogales, Ariz. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
Customs and Border Protection (CPB) apprehended nearly 1,000 migrants in “three large groups” crossing into Texas and Arizona, the agency said Tuesday.
“Before 5 a.m. MT this morning, BorderPatrol agents apprehended more than 980 individuals that illegally crossed the border in 3 large groups,” the agency tweeted along with a video.
“The groups, mostly comprised of family units from Central America, were apprehended in the El Paso and Tucson sectors.”
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One of those groups contained 360 people, CBP said in a statement. They were detained after Border Patrol camera operators saw a “mass of people after multiple buses arrived south of the U.S.-Mexico border approximately 14 miles west of the Port of Lukeville,” the agency said. “Border Patrol agents watched as the group exited the buses and walked under the vehicle barrier that sits on the international boundary.”
CBP called the increase in southwestern border crossings “alarming,” especially in light of the predominance of families and unaccompanied children.
“This stark and increasing shift to more vulnerable populations, combined with the overwhelming numbers, and inadequate capacity to detain families and children, has created a humanitarian and border security crisis,” CBP said. “The increase in apprehensions is taxing the entire immigration system, especially the capabilities of ICE and CBP, creating an untenable situation for both CBP personnel and migrants.”
The number, while fairly large, reflects a recent surge – though numbers are still at a historic low, the Los Angeles Times reported last month. In February, 66,450 migrants were arrested along the southwestern border, or more than 2,300 daily.
It was higher than at any time over the past 10 years, the Los Angeles Times said, but the 396,579 pulled in during fiscal 2018 was low compared to the more than one million apprehended annually between the 1980s and the 2000s, the newspaper noted.
The overwhelm also reflects understaffing, as Newsweek reported in January. CBP is under a congressional mandate to have a minimum of 21,370 agents, but in 2017 there were only 19,437, Newsweek said.
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On the immigrants’ side, a “convergence of factors” has led to the current surge in migration, wrote Doris Meissner and Sarah Pierce for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to immigration issues.
Caravans have “threatened the business model of smuggling networks” by offering safer travel, leading to more aggressive tactics by smuggling organizations, Meissner and Pierce wrote.
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