Hundreds of dates are written on concrete-filled steel posts erected along the US border with Mexico to commemorate when the Border Patrol has repaired illegal openings in the upcoming barrier.
But no sooner had repairs been made, other posts were sawn, burned and chiseled to gain entrance by large groups of immigrants, usually without the presence of agents.
The breach stretches about 30 miles on washboard gravel roads west of Lukeville, an Arizona desert town that consists of an official border crossing, restaurants and duty-free shops.
The repairs date mostly from the spring, when the flat desert area dotted with saguaro cacti becomes the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.
Border Patrol tours of Arizona for news organizations, including The Associated Press, showed improvements in custody conditions and processing times, but the trend was overwhelming.
Immigrants line up at a remote US Border Patrol processing center after crossing the US-Mexico border on Dec. 7, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona. Getty Images
The chaotic scenes, including when daily arrivals averaged more than 7,000 across the border a week in December, were anathema to conservatives in Congress who want major limits on asylum.
That number has prompted the White House and some Democratic members of Congress to consider major limits on asylum as part of a deal for Ukraine aid.
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, wanting to surrender to agents.
Immigrants are searched before boarding a bus at a temporary processing center after crossing the border wall into the US from Mexico, as the number of migrants increases in the border town of Lukeville, Arizona, Dec 12, 2023. REUTERS
A Mexican woman walks briskly with her two daughters and five grandchildren, ages 2 to 7, after being dropped off by a bus in Mexico and directed by the driver.
“They tell us where to go; to go straight,” said Alicia Santay, from Guatemala, who was waiting at a Border Patrol tent in Lukeville for initial processing. Santay, 22, and his 16-year-old sister hope to join their father in New York.
The date when the wall damage was repaired is often consolidated, written in white letters against the rust-colored steel. One cluster shows five dates from April 12 to Oct. 3.
A migrant crosses the border wall through a gap into the US from Mexico, as the number of migrants increases in the border town of Lukeville, Arizona, on Dec 12, 2023. REUTERS
On Friday, agents drove around looking for an opening and found one on a column that had been repaired twice — on Oct. 31. and again on Dec. 5.
The smuggling organization removed a few inches from the bottom of the 30-foot (9.1-meter) steel pole, which agents said could take at least half an hour. The columns sway back and forth, like a cantilevered hammock, creating enough space for large groups to walk through.
Welders often install metal bars horizontally across several columns to prevent swinging, but there are many other places to look.
Agents said it took up to an hour to drive from Lukeville along the gravel road to find the breach – a significant amount of time when treating so many immigrants in custody.
Migrants wait to be processed and transported at a temporary processing center after crossing the border in Lukeville, Arizona, on Dec. 12, 2023. REUTERS
“Our officers and agents are responding to large groups of immigrants, which means that some of our agents are not online, not really monitoring for some of those cuts,” said Troy Miller, acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. “If we don’t have anyone to respond to, then you’ll see what you see.”
The number of daily arrivals was “unprecedented,” Miller said, with illegal crossings exceeding 10,000 some days across the border in December.
On Monday, CBP suspended cross-border rail traffic in the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso in response to migrants boarding freight trains through Mexico, hopping off just before entering the US. The Lukeville border crossing was closed, as was the pedestrian crossing in San Diego, so more officers could be assigned to immigration.
Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time in each of the last two years of the US government’s budget, reflecting technological changes that have increased global mobility and a host of ills that are driving people from their homes, including wealth inequality, natural disasters, political repression and organized crime.
Miller said the solution extends beyond CBP, including the Border Patrol, to other agencies whose responsibilities include long-term detention and asylum screening. Regarding the wall’s wounds, Miller said Mexican authorities “need to step up.”
The United States is currently witnessing the largest surge of immigrants entering the country in the history of the US Border Patrol. DINNER ALLISON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which includes Lukeville, topped all nine sectors on the Mexican border from May through October, except for June, according to the latest public figures. It’s a throwback to the early 2000s before traffic shifted to Texas, but the demographics are much different.
Arrests of family members approached 72,000 in the Tucson sector from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, more than nine times the same period last year.
That’s a big change since almost all immigrants are adult men. Arrests of non-Mexicans exceeded 75,000, nearly four times the number from a year ago and more than half of all sector arrests.
A Texas National Guard soldier watches over a group of more than 1,000 migrants who have crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on Dec. 18, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Getty Images
Senegalese accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, while arrests of people from Guinea and India exceeded 4,000 each. Agents have found immigrants from about four dozen countries in the Eastern hemisphere.
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Agents who pick up migrants near the wall drive them to Lukeville to take pictures on cellphones that begin their processing.
They drove about 45 minutes to the station in Ajo that was built to hold 100 people but housed 325 on Friday. Some take buses to other Border Patrol sectors but most are sent to Tucson, about a two-hour drive.
In a white tent area near Tucson International Airport built for about 1,000 people, some migrants are flown to the Texas border for processing.
The others were released within two days, as mandated by a court order in the Tucson sector. CBP policy limits detention to 72 hours.
Most were released with notices to appear in immigration court, which has a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Some are detained longer by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The tents are a far cry from 2021 in Donna, Texas, where more than 4,000 migrants, mostly unaccompanied children, were held in a space designed for 250 under COVID-19 restrictions.
The border crossing is closed on Friday, Dec. 15. 2023, in Lukeville, Ariz. AP
Some stayed for weeks, relying on sleeping pads and foil blankets.
In 2019, investigators found 900 people crammed into 125-person cells in El Paso, with inmates standing on toilets to get room to breathe.
They wear dirty clothes for days or weeks.
Debates in Congress may result in the most important immigration legislation since 1996.
Potential changes include more mandatory detention and the wider use of rules to raise the threshold for initial asylum checks.
Although higher screening standards have been applied to tens of thousands of immigrants since May after entering the country illegally, they have not been used in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector because of the unusually high flow.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
