Migrants still pour across border into Texas
Central American asylum seekers appear undeterred by Trump administration policies
GRANJENO — About 40 migrant children and parents walked along a gravel path after crossing the Rio Grande on rafts at dawn on Thursday. Their clothes and hair were wet and sticky in the muggy morning air.
Their objective: to surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents as soon as possible.
They were greeted by Border Patrol signs in Spanish (“Follow the arrows to receive help”) that guided the asylum-seekers along the winding, gravel road to a clearing beneath the Anzalduas International Bridge, where agents were waiting to take them into custody.
Border Patrol Agent Carlos Ruiz greeted the group about a half mile from the clearing. By that point, the migrants had walked more than three miles since crossing the river.
“Is everyone OK? Anyone sick?” Ruiz asked.
“Yes, over here,” a man called out from the rear of the group.
Ruiz circled to the back to find a boy who was being held upright by two men, his feet dragging in the dirt. His face was pale; he was dehydrated. Ruiz loaded the boy into his vehicle to take him to a Border Patrol field tent under the bridge, where agents turned on the air conditioning
and evaluated his condition.
Central American migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. continue to pour across the border in South Texas, seemingly unfazed by Trump administration policies intended to keep them on Mexican soil or discourage them from leaving their home countries in the first place.
The administration has used the threat of punitive tariffs to prod Mexico to deploy national guard troops and interdict the flow of Central Americans through its territory. At some legal ports of entry, the administration is requiring migrants to wait in Mexico, sometimes for weeks or months, while their petitions for asylum are considered.
On Monday, President Donald Trump announced that migrants’ asylum petitions would be rejected if they had not already sought asylum in a country they traveled through on their journey north. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups promptly filed suit seeking to block the policy.
Despite efforts to block or slow the torrent, the migrants keep coming. In the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest corridor for unauthorized entry into the U.S., about 1,000 migrants are taken into custody every day.
Along the length of the southern border, more than 100,000 migrants per month present themselves at legal ports of entry or are apprehended after crossing the border illegally — the largest number in over seven years.
The number dipped last month — from 144,207 crossings at or between ports of entry in May to 104,300 crossings in June. Still, the June figure represented a 142percent increase compared with a year earlier.
The Border Patrol has been putting up field tents in clearings like the one beneath the Anzalduas Bridge to manage the flow. Agents also recently put up signage to guide the migrants toward Border Patrol agents.
Unlike previous waves of migrants, many of the Central American families who now predominate make no effort to slip across the border undetected. They seek out Border Patrol agents, eager to be taken into custody.
“That’s not what we’re trained for,” Ruiz said.
The agents, he said, were trained to capture migrants who pose a threat — ones who evade law enforcement to smuggle drugs — or intend to live illegally in the country.
Reina Rossana Najera, 35, was among about 100 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande on Thursday morning and walked to the clearing beneath the Anzalduas Bridge.
She said she came to the U.S. with her two teenage children from Guatemala City to escape suffocating poverty. She said she hadn’t heard about reports from lawmakers, lawyers and government investigators describing squalid conditions at overcrowded Border Patrol stations.
“We haven’t heard of this. We’ve heard about a cold place,” she said, referring to the detention centers nicknamed hieleras, or ice boxes. “But only God really knows what to expect here, because it hasn’t happened to us yet.”
Jose Iseas came from Guatemala with his 2-year-old son. He stood in line next to Najera as they waited for Border Patrol vehicles to take them to the McAllen station.
His son and another toddler appeared content despite their wet clothes and long journey. They crouched in the dirt and drew figures together, giggling in the quiet morning and caking their moist shins with dirt.
“I’m glad we’re out of Mexico. It was dangerous there,” Iseas said. “Now we’re just tired and hungry.”
Signs of the nonstop exodus of migrants were everywhere in evidence. Along a section of border wall near the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum, part of a nature sanctuary, two broken wooden ladders that migrants had used to climb the wall lay on the ground. Border Patrol agents had found them and broken them.
In the brush near the Anzalduas Bridge, Mexican immigration papers and migrants’ belongings were strewn along the gravel road. Scores of footprints were visible.
Large cameras atop towers surveyed the border for signs of movement in ranchland and in a national wildlife refuge near McAllen. Helicopters with heat sensors help agents detect migrants in the brush, and large white surveillance blimps float among the clouds.
After being sorted out into different categories — family units, unaccompanied minors and single adults — the migrants crossing the river here are taken to Border Patrol stations, where agents conduct background checks.
Later, asylum officers will interview migrants to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of being persecuted for religious, political or other reason if returned to their home countries. Credible fear is an initial threshold for eligibility for asylum. A final determination on asylum can take years.
After entering the country, migrants are not supposed to be held in Border Patrol stations for more than 72 hours, but there have been numerous reports in recent months about overcrowding and prolonged detention. Parents with children are often released within days, but some single adults have been stuck for weeks in facilities unequipped for long-term housing.
A portion of the $4.6 billion in humanitarian aid for these and other facilities that was approved by Congress this month has gone to Rio Grande Valley facilities. Three Border Patrol stations in the sector — in McAllen, Weslaco and Rio Grande City — now have shower facilities, Ruiz said.
A third temporary tent for processing and housing migrants is being built in Donna.
On Thursday morning, another group of about two dozen migrants stood underneath the Anzalduas Bridge as the sun crept above the brush, sending beams of filtered light into the clearing. They’d just crossed the river and walked the nearly 4 miles to the clearing. Parents and children stood in one line, unaccompanied minors in another.
Ruiz said the groups of families arriving at the clearing had broken two laws: not presenting themselves for inspection at a port of entry, and being in the U.S. illegally.
“I’m not an asylum officer. What I know is they crossed illegally,” Ruiz said. “And our job is to apprehend people who are not presenting themselves for inspection.”