Illegal crossings rise in remote areas as Congress and White House weigh important limits on asylum

Hundreds of dates are written on concrete-filled steel columns erected along the U.S.-Mexico border to remember when the Border Patrol repaired illicit openings in potential barriers.

However, as soon as repairs are made, another column is cut, burned and chiseled to allow large groups of migrants to enter, usually with no agents in sight.

The gaps stretch about 30 miles on a gravel road west of Lukeville, a town in the Arizona desert that consists of an official border crossing, a restaurant and a duty-free store.

Repair dates mostly date back to spring, when the flat desert region dotted with saguaro cacti became the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

A Border Patrol tour of Arizona for news organizations including The Associated Press showed improvements in custody conditions and processing times, but the flows are overwhelming.

Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on December 7, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona. fake images

The chaotic scenes, even as daily arrivals averaged more than 7,000 people across the border per week in December, are a trap for conservatives in Congress who want greater limits on asylum.

The numbers have led the White House and some congressional Democrats to consider significant limits on asylum as part of a deal for aid to Ukraine.

As Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas left closed-door talks with congressional leaders on Friday, dozens of migrants from Senegal, Guinea and Mexico walked along the Arizona border wall built during Donald Trump’s presidency, seeking to surrender. to the agents.

Migrants are body searched before boarding a bus at the temporary processing center after crossing the border wall into the United States from Mexico, as the number of migrants increases in the border city of Lukeville, Arizona, on December 12, 2023. REUTERS

A Mexican woman walked briskly with her two daughters and five grandchildren, ages 2 to 7, after a bus dropped them off in Mexico and they were instructed by a guide.

“They told us where to go; go straight,” said Alicia Santay of Guatemala, who waited in a Border Patrol tent in Lukeville for initial processing. Santay, 22, and her 16-year-old sister were hoping to join her father in New York.

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The dates when gaps in the walls were fixed are often grouped together, written in white letters on rust-colored steel. One group showed five dates from April 12 to October 3.

A migrant crosses the border wall through a gap into the United States from Mexico, as the number of migrants increases in the border town of Lukeville, Arizona, December 12, 2023. REUTERS

On Friday, officers searched for openings and found one in a column that was repaired twice: on Oct. 31 and again on Dec. 5.

Smuggling organizations remove a few inches from the bottom of 30-foot (9.1-meter) steel poles, which agents say can take as little as half an hour. The columns swing back and forth, like a cantilevered swing, creating ample space for large groups to walk.

Welders often place metal bars horizontally along several columns to prevent them from swaying, but there are plenty of other places to see.

Agents say it takes up to an hour to drive from Lukeville on the gravel road to discover gaps, a long amount of time when caring for so many immigrants in custody.

Migrants wait to be processed and transported at the temporary processing center after crossing the border in Lukeville, Arizona, December 12, 2023. REUTERS

“Our officers and agents are responding to large groups of migrants, which means some of our agents are not on the line, not really monitoring some of those cuts,” said Troy Miller, acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. . “If we don’t have anyone to respond, then you’ll see what you’re seeing.”

The number of daily arrivals is “unprecedented,” Miller said, and on some days in December illegal crossings exceeded 10,000 across the border.

On Monday, CBP suspended cross-border rail traffic in the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso in response to migrants traveling on freight trains through Mexico, getting off just before entering the United States. The Lukeville border crossing is closed, as is a pedestrian entrance into San Diego, so more officers can be assigned to the influx of migrants.

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Arrests for illegal crossings surpassed 2 million for the first time in each of the last two U.S. government budget years, reflecting technological changes that have increased global mobility and a host of ills that lead people to leave their homes, including wealth inequality, natural disasters and political repression. and organized crime.

Miller said the solutions go far beyond CBP, which includes Border Patrol, to other agencies whose responsibilities include long-term detention and asylum evaluations. Regarding cuts to the wall, Miller said Mexican authorities “need to step up.”

The United States is currently experiencing the largest increase in migrants entering the country in the history of the United States Border Patrol. DINNER ALLISON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which includes Lukeville, surpassed all nine sectors on the border with Mexico from May to October except June, according to the latest public figures. It’s a throwback to the early 2000s, before trafficking moved to Texas, but the demographics are very different.

Family arrests neared 72,000 in the Tucson sector from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, more than nine times the same period last year.

This is a big change from when almost all immigrants were adult men. Arrests of non-Mexicans exceeded 75,000, almost quadruple the number from a year ago and more than half of all arrests in the sector.

A Texas National Guard soldier watches over a group of more than 1,000 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on December 18, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas. fake images

Senegalese accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson from October 1 to December 9, while arrests of people from Guinea and India exceeded 4,000 each. Agents have encountered immigrants from about four dozen countries in the Eastern Hemisphere.

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Agents who pick up immigrants near the wall take them to Lukeville to have cell phone photographs taken to begin processing.

They drive about 45 minutes to a station in Ajo that was built to hold 100 people but held 325 on Friday. Some are transported by bus to other Border Patrol sectors, but most are sent to Tucson, about two hours away.

In a cluster of white tents near Tucson International Airport that was built for about 1,000 people, some migrants are flown to the Texas border for processing.

Others are released within two days, as required by a court order in the Tucson sector. CBP policy limits detention to 72 hours.

Most are released with notices to appear in immigration courts, which are backlogged with more than 3 million cases. Some remain detained longer by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The tents are a far cry from those of 2021 in Donna, Texas, where more than 4,000 migrants, mostly unaccompanied children, were held in a space designed for 250 people under COVID-19 restrictions.

The border crossing remains closed on Friday, December 15, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona AP

Some stayed for weeks, relying on sleeping mats and foil blankets.

In 2019, investigators found 900 people crammed into a cell for 125 in El Paso, with detainees standing in bathrooms to give themselves room to breathe.

They wore dirty clothes for days or weeks.

Discussions in Congress may produce the most significant immigration legislation since 1996.

Potential changes include more mandatory detention and broader use of a rule to raise thresholds for initial asylum evaluations.

While the higher screening standard has been applied to tens of thousands of immigrants since May after entering the country illegally, it is not used in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector because of extraordinarily high flows.

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Source: vtt.edu.vn

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