COLUMBUS, N.M. — On an icy Wednesday morning in January, Border Patrol Agent Joel Freeland cruised along a stretch of border wall where someone on the Mexico side had blow-torched through a set of steel flood gates west of the port of entry.
Unauthorized border crossings climbed 71% in Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, compared to the same three-month period a year ago. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 49,012 encounters October through December in the sector that includes West Texas and New Mexico, up from 28,553 in the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
Voices cracked over a Border Patrol radio as agents shared notes about footprints they were following: patterns of circles and rainbows on the soles of shoes likely belonging to migrants moving north through the desert.
Another agent came over the radio: “That group was app’d (apprehended),” he said, confirming that the footprints were old. It wasn’t known, yet, whether the footprints of the apprehended migrants belonged to the same group that cut through the wall or if they had succeeded in evading agents.
People from increasingly diverse backgrounds are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without permission and attempting to evade agents, often making multiple attempts after being quickly returned to Mexico under the pandemic Title 42 policy. The policy has reduced opportunities for migrants to legally claim asylum in the U.S.
On the day in mid-January when Freeland patrolled the ranches and farmland adjacent to the Mexican border, agents in El Paso Sector encountered or apprehended migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Cuba — the majority. Agents also encountered people from Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Sri Lanka and Peru.
“We are seeing an increase in nationalities,” said Border Patrol El Paso Sector Chief Gloria Chavez.
The diversity in the migrant population “presents linguistic challenges,” she said. Agents sometimes use translation applications on their smartphones to communicate with migrants in the field. At processing centers, Border Patrol has put up “I speak” posters with a long list of languages migrants can point to, for an agent to contact an interpreter.
Border Patrol began reporting “encounters” with migrants in addition to “apprehensions” at the onset of Title 42, a public health law invoked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent border control agencies from detaining people in congregant settings, such as holding stations.
In a Title 42 “encounter,” Border Patrol quickly returns migrants to Mexico or their home country. The policy has resulted in individuals attempting to cross the border multiple times, inflating the number of migrants encountered.
Chavez said Title 42 “protects the agents and it protects the migrants they encounter.”
“We all know that migrants in a congregant setting, or any human being as a group, it increases the chances of the virus spreading quickly,” she said. “Title 42 has been a great tool for us to use in the field to keep everyone safe.”
Immigrant advocates say the pandemic policy — originally put in place under the Trump administration in March 2020 and extended by the Biden administration — effectively prevents asylum seekers from seeking legal protection in the United States.
Some public health experts have also decried the policy as being xenophobic and untethered from science.
Dozens of medical doctors and public health scholars signed an open letter to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in September, calling for an end to the application of Title 42 at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Single male illegals released in Brownsville.
Another bus just pulled up and is making more drop offs of single adults. We have seen several hundred released in this spot since yesterday. pic.twitter.com/86RBeQExvf
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) January 26, 2022
BREAKING: ICE responds to our @FoxNews reporting showing the agency mass releasing single adult male migrants in Brownsville, TX. ICE says they focus enforcement on public safety threats, and those they deem suitable for release are subject to reporting requirements. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/JoPuSqNaTP
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) January 26, 2022
“Rather than continuing to rely on a discriminatory and unjustifiable order,” the signatories wrote, “U.S. authorities should adopt measures that are based on sound science and public health practice, and that comply with U.S. law and treaty obligations towards refugees and asylum-seekers.”
Of the encounters in October, November and December, 68% or 33,558 were processed under Title 42. Eighty-six percent, or 24,696, were processed under Title 42 in the comparable period a year ago.
North of the border wall flood gates, four Border Patrol agents in jeans and boots stood next to a horse trailer parked on the dirt shoulder of Highway 9. They would cover the desert terrain on horseback in search of the group that might have gotten away.
The morning was otherwise quiet in Border Patrol El Paso Sector’s Deming station, masking how busy agents were further west over the Apache Mountains and in Santa Teresa, near El Paso’s city limits.
Across El Paso sector that day, Border Patrol logged 510 encounters in a 24-hour period, making El Paso the third-busiest of nine Border Patrol sectors, behind Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected]
©2022 www.elpasotimes.com. Visit elpasotimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Have you ever given any thought to why this treasonous Democrat wants to flood our country with illegal immigrants? To encourage, protect, support and to transport them to Republican party States?
New York and California have already given illegal immigrants the right to vote and get drivers licenses and Social Security cards.
Hummm….. What could be the Democrat Party’s motivation to do this???
BECAUSE they effectively want to ELIMINATE THE VOTE OF american citizens!
I’ve never heard truer words.
WHICH IS why every politician FOR THIS stuff, and EVERYONE TOO SCARED to speak out against it, SHOULD BE HUNG FOR high treason….
I am confident that, if our forefathers were here today, they would be running these illegals back across the border ALONG WITH THESE ANTI-AMERICA LIBERALS WHO ARE PUTTING THEIR HATRED FOR THIS COUNTRY ON PROMINENT DISPLAY.
THEY WOULD have already been STRUNG UP, for Treason..
can you hear it? that sound what is it?
well it is america being flushed down a third world toilet by the biden administration.
while we do nothing to stop him.
These anti-american politicians will regret what they are doing but it will be too late for them but not for their generations to come. I see their children, grand children and so on suffering immensely because of what their relatives did to them. Or maybe by then they won’t even know who they are, what they are or where they are.
THEY LACK a soul, so how will they ever ‘regret’ anything!? TO regret, is to realize you DID WRONG.. THEY SEE THEMSELVES As doing right.
If our government refuses to enforce our laws passed by Congress, maybe it is time for vigilantes and the States to STOP illegal entry to our country.
And as i have said, IF THE LEFT REFUSES TO ENFORCE the laws, THEN WE no longer Need to have LAW MAKERS!
Thank good ole sleeeeepy, creeeeeepy joe!
Slow joe needs to be impeached for that. Republicans better investigate this when they take the senate. Since Trump doesn’t get Executive privilege, then neither should joe.