According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, “pseudo-legitimate” travel agencies springing up in Senegal offer migrants “full packages” to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Travel agencies operate from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and offer visa-free travel to Europe and then Mexico. Once in North America, clients are connected to a smuggling organization that will help them illegally cross the southern border of the United States, according to the US official.
“They sell complete packages to connect them with a smuggling organization that will then facilitate their movement to the border,” the official said.
CBP is “working with partners across the hemisphere and around the world to really make sure that we are strengthening people’s access to protections in the right way and taking steps to prevent people from trying to exploit different travel mechanisms.”
Smuggling organizations have built a large bus line in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, sending dozens of buses per day to random points along the US-Mexico border to “facilitate migration,” according to the official.
“Pseudo-legitimate” travel agencies in Senegal serve people hoping to illegally cross the southern border into the United States, according to a U.S. official. fake images
“These smugglers are recklessly putting migrants in harm’s way: in remote locations across the border, on the roofs of trains or in the waters of the Rio Grande,” said CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller in a statement. statement issued last week.
“We continue to pursue smugglers and are implementing new measures to impose consequences on transportation companies, including bus lines and vans used by smuggling organizations and nefarious actors to move migrants through northern Mexico and toward our southwest border.” , he added. “CBP and our federal partners need additional funding from Congress so we can continue to enforce consequences for those who do not use established pathways.”
The number of migrants from Asia and Africa crossing the southern border has tripled since last year, according to CBP data. DINNER ALLISON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Arrests of migrants from countries including Senegal, Mauritania, China and India entering through Mexico increased to 214,000 during fiscal year 2023, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection. The staggering amount tripled the number of migrant “encounters” from Asia and Africa in fiscal year 2022, which was 70,000, according to CBP statistics.
Senegalese accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson, Arizona, from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, where agents encountered immigrants from about four dozen Eastern Hemisphere countries.
The agency reported last week that Border Patrol agents encountered nearly a quarter of a million migrants (242,418) on the southern border in November alone, up from 240,986 encounters recorded in October.
Travel agencies offer to connect would-be migrants with smuggling organizations in Mexico. DINNER ALLISON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) on Tuesday accused the Biden administration of using Border Patrol agents as “travel agents,” rather than having them stop the flow of migrants.
“We have brave men and women of the Border Patrol who are down there, ready, willing and able, who want to enforce our laws, who want to fight for our country, and instead, as you point out, they are assigned tasks like “Pull out blankets and work as travel agents to bring people to this country,” Lee said during an interview on Fox News.
The CBP chief noted last week that encounter levels along the southwest border are “presenting a serious challenge to the men and women of CBP.”
“To meet this challenge, we are using all available resources to ensure the safety of our agents and officers, and of migrants who are often deceived and victimized by transnational criminal organizations,” Miller said.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn