30 Unaccompanied Children Discovered Among 376 Migrants Caught Tunneling into US
About half of a huge group of illegal immigrants arrested in Arizona were children, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Thirty of those children were traveling alone without family members.
“In my 30 years with the Border Patrol, I have not been part of arresting a group of 376 people,” said Yuma Border Sector Chief Anthony Porvaznik, according to ABC. “That’s really unheard of.”
The vast majority of those detained were family members from Guatemala, said National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, CNN reported.
Judd said the group was “the largest I’ve ever heard of.”
The arrests took place in an area targeted for barrier replacement.
Agent Jose Garibay, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, said the bollard-style fence was not designed to stop the tactics of current migrants coming to the U.S.
“The bollards, when they were put in, they didn’t have concrete footers, because it wasn’t designed to stop from digging under, it was designed to stop the vehicle traffic,” Garibay said, according to the Arizona Republic.
The illegal immigrants dug a tunnel to enter the U.S., officials said.
“They dug under the fence,” Judd explained. “Unlike most areas along the border, Yuma has some very sandy areas that is easy to dig in.”
Additional footage of #YumaSector Border Patrol agents processing the group of 376 Central Americans on Monday. #NationalSecurity #SouthwestBorder pic.twitter.com/SohiN2XPu0
— CBP Arizona (@CBPArizona) January 18, 2019
Porvaznik said the estimate of families could be inaccurate.
“The only reason they’re trying to say that they’re family units is that they know if they’re a family unit, they’re going to be released within 20 days,” he said.
He said, however, that there is no question of the increase in children crossing the border.
“That’s our No. 1 challenge that we have here in the Yuma sector, is the humanitarian problem,” Porvaznik said, later adding that “87 percent of the apprehensions here are family units and unaccompanied alien children.”
Two days after the Arizona incident, Border Patrol agents arrested 247 illegal immigrants in New Mexico.
200+ Migrants Surrender to Border Patrol Agents Near Lordsburg, NM https://t.co/j8nZWankRC pic.twitter.com/jfyDVxAv4O
— El Paso Herald-Post (@epheraldpost) January 17, 2019
Border Patrol officials said that 24 groups of 100 or more illegal immigrants have crossed the border in the vicinity of Lordsburg, New Mexico, since Oct. 1.
The Border Patrol made 396,579 arrests along the Mexican border in the 2018 fiscal year. Although that was up 30 percent from the 2017 total, it remains below the peak of 1.6 million in 2001, Fox News reported.
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