Migrants are being offered a “complete package” to the US border with Mexico by a “pseudo-legal” travel agency that has sprung up in Senegal, according to a US Customs and Border Protection official.
Travel agencies run out of Senegal’s capital, Dakar, and tout visa-free travel to Europe, and then to Mexico. Once in North America, customers are connected to smuggling organizations that will help them cross the US southern border illegally, according to US officials.
“They sell complete packages to connect them with smuggling organizations which 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’re strengthening people’s access to protection the right way and taking action to prevent people from trying to exploit different travel mechanisms.”
The smuggling organization has built a huge bus route in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, sending dozens of buses a day to random spots along the US-Mexico border to “facilitate migration,” according to the official.
A “pseudo-legal” travel agency in Senegal is providing services to people hoping to cross the US southern border illegally, according to a US official. Getty Images
“These smugglers are recklessly putting immigrants in harm’s way: in remote locations across the border, on top of a train, or into the waters of the Rio Grande,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement issued last week.
“We continue to pursue smugglers and implement new measures to impose consequences on transportation companies including bus and van routes used by smuggling organizations and bad actors to move migrants through northern Mexico and to our southwest border,” he added. “CBP and our federal partners need additional funding from Congress so that we can continue to implement consequences for those who do not use the designated routes.”
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
Apprehensions of migrants from countries such as Senegal, Mauritania, China and India entering through Mexico rose to 214,000 in fiscal year 2023, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. The staggering number is three times the number of migrant “encounters” from Asia and Africa in fiscal year 2022, which was 70,000, according to CBP statistics.
Senegalese nationals accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson, Ariz., from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, where agents have found immigrants from about four dozen Eastern hemisphere countries.
The agency reported last week that Border Patrol agents encountered nearly a quarter of a million immigrants (242,418) at the southern border in November — up from 240,986 encounters recorded in October.
Travel agencies offer to connect would-be migrants to smuggling organizations in Mexico. DINNER ALLISON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) accused the Biden administration on Tuesday of using Border Patrol agents like “tourists,” instead of asking them to stem the flow of immigrants.
“We have the 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 pointed out, they are given a job like passing. come out and work as a travel agent to bring people to this country,” Lee said during an interview on Fox News.
The CBP chief said last week that the level of encounters across the southwest border “presents a serious challenge to the men and women of CBP.”
“To meet this challenge, we are using all available resources to ensure the safety and security of our agents and officers, and the migrants who are often misled and victimized by transnational criminal organizations,” Miller said.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
