Thousands of immigrants surge across border into Brownsville, Texas
Anna Giaritelli
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Human smugglers working for Mexican cartels have pushed thousands of immigrants across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Matamoros in the last several days, overwhelming Border Patrol agents in Brownsville, Texas,
The surge began last weekend as agents based out of Brownsville made more than 1,000 apprehensions of immigrants crossing illegally each day.
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In a 24-hour period Monday, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley of southeastern Texas took 1,600 people into custody, including groups of a couple of hundred people that came over the river on makeshift rafts and on foot.
Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to a request for comment on the total number of immigrants in custody or who had passed through its custody over the past week. Two supervisory Border Patrol agents told the Washington Examiner that agents in the Rio Grande Valley had made well over 10,000 apprehensions over the past week. The agents were not authorized to speak on behalf of the Border Patrol and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We are here today addressing this migrant influx that has been affecting us now for about a week. We’ve had some high numbers of migrants come across this location. As you can see — a lot of the clothing, there’s a lot of clothing left all over the area,” said Gloria Chavez, Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector chief patrol agent, in a video shared on social media Thursday.
Hundreds of pieces of clothing have been left behind on the U.S. shoreline and line the dirt trail through the brush to an opening where agents organize immigrants into groups.
In a video that Chavez filmed on the shoreline, she explained that immigrants who have been camped outside in Matamoros could wade through the water and then cross to shore, where they see heaps of clothing that lead up from the river. Trails lead up from the river into the brush where immigrants surrender to federal law enforcement agents and then are transported to stations or tent facilities.
New technology in handheld devices has allowed agents to verify a person’s identification and begin the intake process while still on the border waiting to load buses going to stations.
“This advancement in mobile technology has expedited intake and processing in the field. Great work by our Border Patrol Agents as they manage through this migrant influx in the #RGV Sector,” Chavez said in an Instagram post.
Agents who have commercial driver’s licenses have been tasked with driving large white school buses to and from the border.
The influx of people has been so great that Chavez enlisted help from six of Border Patrol’s other eight regions on the 2,000-mile southern border. Other agents outside the region have been assigned “virtual processing,” which allows agents out of state to do a video interview and process people in custody faster.
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The influx of people began last weekend, roughly three weeks before the pandemic-era public health policy, Title 42, is slated to end. The conclusion of Title 42 — after more than three years of its being in effect — is a double-edged sword for Border Patrol agents and immigrants.
Title 42 allowed Border Patrol agents to immediately send illegal immigrants back to Mexico and agents did not have to transport, process, and detain people in the U.S. However, immigrants who were expelled did not face a consequence for illegally entering the U.S., which is a federal misdemeanor. Rather than being detained and prosecuted, they were returned, and many tried multiple times to enter knowing it would not count against them.