The Border Patrol announced it will begin construction of another soft-sided migrant detention facility in response to the continuing surge of illegal border crossings. The facility in Laredo, Texas, like others recently constructed along the state’s border with Mexico, will accommodate 500 migrants and will be completed in late September.
Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents and local police officers discovered 120 migrants locked inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig late last month. The group included five unaccompanied minors.
Border Patrol agents in South Texas teamed up with state and local law enforcement to interdict several human smuggling operations, one ending with an armed suspect.
Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents utilizing Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) detected a group of 30 migrants preparing to enter the United States illegally. Ground-based agents later intervened.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents carried out multiple rescues of migrants in life-threatening situations over the past few days. One included a mother and her nine-year-old son who human smugglers abandoned in the deadly ranch lands of Brooks County, Texas.
The number of migrants crossing the border without being apprehended soared to more than 340,000 migrants so far this Fiscal Year 2021, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection source. This figure represents an estimate of the total number of migrants believed to have escaped into the U.S. interior without capture or apprehension by Border Patrol agents.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officials found the bodies or skeletal remains of more than 100 migrants so far this fiscal year.
Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 120 migrants from four countries who illegally crossed the Mexican border into Arizona. The agents apprehended the migrants came from two groups apprehended within a 48-hour period.
Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents found 10 migrants being smuggled in a fake Border Patrol SUV. The driver also wore a cloned uniform.
Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended about 1,100 migrants over the weekend who illegally crossed the border from Mexico. Officials report the migrants “breached the old primary fence.”
Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents rescued a migrant teen who had been abandoned by human smugglers. The agents found the Mexican minor approximately 60 miles from the border.
For a second time in as many days, Hutchinson County Sheriff Blaik Kemp and his deputies were forced to release migrants after federal officials refused to take them into custody. Sheriff’s office officials released the migrants, 24 in all, after Kemp exhausted all efforts to get assistance from federal agencies. Deputies arrested two suspects and charged them with Trafficking of Persons among other charges.
Arrests of migrants with previous convictions for sexual offenses jumped 171 percent during the first 10 months of Fiscal Year 2021, according to a report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Agents apprehended 423 criminal aliens with convictions for sexual offenses as of July 31.
Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 140 mostly Guatemalan migrants after human smugglers put them into the Arizona desert. The group included more than 80 unaccompanied children.
An El Centro Sector Border Patrol Horse Patrol Unit rescued eight migrants who became lost in the desert after illegally crossing from Mexico. The rescue of the four adults and four minors came from the successful coordination of efforts between the Government of Mexico and U.S. Border Patrol.
A Border Patrol K-9 team carrying out train inspections in the Del Rio Sector found a toddler and his mother locked inside a grain-hopper rail car. The mother and son were without food or water in triple-digit temperatures.
Border Patrol officials in the Texas Rio Grande Valley announced a new sector record for the apprehension of migrants in a 24-hour period. The apprehensions, which were recorded on Thursday, totaled nearly 4,000 throughout the day. Ironically, the record-breaking apprehensions occurred on the very day Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the area to get a firsthand look at conditions on the ground in South Texas.
Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 200,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico during the month of July. This represents an increase of more than 418 percent over the same month last year and a 12 percent increase over the previous 21-year-high mark set in June.
Texas border community leaders are set to meet with Biden Administration officials and will reportedly ask for a moratorium on releasing additional migrants from federal custody.
Human smugglers moved an unaccompanied six-year-old across the Arizona border from Mexico and then abandoned the boy.
Border Patrol agents in the nation’s busiest sector, the Rio Grande Valley, apprehended more than 320 migrants in two groups during a 24-hour period.
The Biden Administration is holding what appears to be thousands of migrants in what the ACLU calls an “inhumane outdoor pen.” Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol officials are being forced to store recently apprehended migrants under the Anzalduas International Bridge near Mission, Texas, because of overcrowding in processing centers.
Surveillance video released by Yuma Sector Border Patrol officials revealed a group of 85 migrants illegally entering the U.S. late last week. The group included 35 children.
President Joe Biden’s border officials are now declaring a crackdown on illegal migrants after choosing to admit roughly 700,000 economic migrants in seven months across the Mexican border.
A leaked presidential briefing document reported on by NBC News revealed that 20 percent of unaccompanied migrant children who illegally crossed the border are testing positive for COVID-19 after being released into communities by Border Patrol. The report covers the last two to three weeks of data prepared for President Joe Biden, NBC says.
A San Diego Sector Border Patrol marine unit interdicted a human smuggling vessel off the coast of California and led to the apprehension of 16 migrants.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents found a group of 14 migrants packed inside a produce trailer at an interior immigration checkpoint in Texas. Agents in the sector also rescued a migrant who fell from a cliff and injured his leg.
Mark Morgan, former acting CBP commissioner, said Democrats plan to include an amnesty proposal within ostensibly infrastructure-focused bill.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials received a 911 call from migrant children who became lost after crossing from Mexico.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents arrested five migrants near Uvalde, Texas, who wore camouflage gear and attempted to avoid apprehension. Officials said they found property stolen during the burglary of a local ranch house.
Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents rescued nine migrants in the Arizona desert after they illegally crossed from Mexico. The agents also found the body of a deceased migrant.
Migrant apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley Sector continue to rise as Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 21,000 migrants during the last week. The announcement by sector officials follows a tweet reporting the apprehension of more than 20,000 migrants the week before.
A video tweeted by Fox News shows perhaps as many as 1,000 migrants being held outdoors under an international border bridge in South Texas on Sunday. The placement of migrants in an outdoor detention facility comes amid the apprehensions of tens of thousands of migrants in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in recent weeks.
A Texas non-profit migrant shelter in Del Rio ignored Governor Greg Abbott’s Executive Order prohibiting the ground transportation of migrants released by Customs and Border Protection officers. Shelter staff and volunteers from the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, which operates out of the Chihuahua Center could be seen on Sunday hastily assisting a large group of mostly Haitian migrants into awaiting vans.
Three more Border Patrol Agents working at the Eagle Pass, Texas, processing center tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, according to a source working under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The agents were assigned to process migrants apprehended in the Del Rio Sector in a soft-sided structure that is currently holding double its rated capacity.
Migrant detention facilities in West Texas, already exceeding capacity, were forced to close their doors to migrants on Saturday as they have exceeded the physical space to take in more. The increasing surge of migrants in the Del Rio Sector forced Border Patrol officials to resort to outdoor detention under the Del Rio International Bridge along the banks of the Rio Grande River.
As the Biden campaign ratcheted-up its rhetoric leading to the 2020 election – decrying not another mile of wall would be built – I, as the former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, knew they were playing a dangerous game of politics.
Big Bend Sector Border Patrol agents continue to find human smugglers packing migrants into dangerously overloaded vehicles that are ripe for the spread of COVID-19. The Big Bend Sector covers some of the most remote areas of the southwestern border including 517 border miles, 77 Texas counties, and the entire state of Oklahoma.
At least three U.S. Border Patrol agents detailed to Texas from the Canadian boundary tested positive for COVID-19 within a week of their arrival, according to a source operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The source said other agents and National Guardsmen may also be exposed to the virus.
Governor Greg Abbott (R) ordered Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers to stop any ground transportation of migrants following an uptick in cases of COVID-19. The governor issued an executive order to stop the ground transportation of migrants who have been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
