Border Patrol says it's ready for new migrant surge in El Paso
EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A new cargo train carrying hundreds of migrants atop boxcars arrived Thursday morning in Juarez, Mexico, the third mass arrival of asylum-seekers to the region in the past three days.
Some U.S. officials are attributing the surge to a concerted effort by transnational criminal organizations to profit from foreign citizens fleeing economic and public safety crises in their countries.
As the trickle of migrants coming across the Rio Grande increases by the hour, U.S. Border Patrol officials in El Paso say they are prepared to handle the surge.
“We have seen multiple small groups of people arriving at different times throughout the night and day,” said Claudio Herrera-Baeza, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Paso. “All these migrants are being pushed by disinformation on social media. [….] They believe that once they cross this border they will put in for asylum and be free to go. The reality is these migrants are going to be processed for removal.”
Last year, the federal government began to implement the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule directing asylum-seekers to make appointments online before showing up at a U.S. port of entry. Those crossing the border between ports of entry could be removed from the country under Title 8 procedures and lose immigration benefits for several years.
The El Paso border has been relatively calm in the past two months, with migrant encounters averaging between 800 to 1,000 a day and the population at processing facilities at under 3,000 despite a mandate to screen anyone who comes across.
“We are processing every single one because we need to know who is coming in,” Herrera-Baeza said. “We have learned from previous migrant surges over the years, we have the capacity to process these migrants in an efficient and humane way.”
Many of the 1,000-plus migrants who arrived in Juarez on Wednesday spent the night in shelters. Hundreds approached the Rio Grande on Thursday afternoon, but many were dumbfounded upon seeing the razor wire and soldiers the Texas Army National Guard has placed in front of the U.S. border wall.
“The Guard is telling us to go to Gate 45. We cannot go there. It is too dangerous. There are cartels down there and we have women and children. They will kidnap us,” said Luis, a Venezuelan migrant. “We will resist here (on the river levee) until we are able to cross. Mexican immigration says they will take us to shelters but we know not all of them are good people. They have returned too many people to (Southern Mexico).”
For the past year or so, asylum-seekers have been directed either by peers who have already crossed or by the smugglers who facilitated their arrival to Juarez to go to Gate 36 of the border wall in El Paso. But because of the heavy presence of the Texas Guard and the intimidating barbwire, many are now trying to turn surrender at Gate 38 to the east.
Herrera-Baeza said the Border Patrol is redeploying its agents to match migrant flows.
On the Juarez side, migrants could be seen gathering along the banks of the Rio Grande for hours at a time, waiting for the right time to cross. Some of the migrants told a Border Report camera crew that peers were suggesting on social media to wait to gather in large numbers so U.S. authorities could not turn them away.
ProVideo in Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.