Texas town is migrant epicenter
ROMA, Texas – As darkness sets on the Rio Grande, U.S. Border Patrol agents hear pumps inflating rafts across the river in Mexico. It is about to get busy.
Within an hour, about 100 people have been dropped off in the United States, including many families with toddlers and children as young as 7 traveling alone.
All wear numbered yellow plastic wristbands that look like they could be used to get into a concert or amusement park, and everyone rips them off and tosses them on the ground after setting foot in the U.S. Large black letters on the wristbands read, “Entregas,” or “Deliveries,” apparently a mechanism for smugglers to keep track of migrants they are ferrying across the river that separates Texas and Mexico.
Roma, a town of 10,000 people with historic buildings and boarded-up storefronts in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, is the latest epicenter of illegal crossings, where growing numbers of families and children are entering the U.S. to seek asylum.
U.S. authorities reported more than 100,000 encounters on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019. Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the month, according to a senior Border Patrol official, who spoke to reporters Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary figures.
More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.
President Joe Biden, whom many migrants see as more welcoming than his predecessor, pushed back on suggestions that his administration’s immigration policies are responsible for the rising numbers. Biden said Thursday that the government will take steps to more quickly move hundreds of migrant children and teenagers out of cramped detention facilities.
On the Rio Grande, a smuggler balked when a U.S. agent asks him to land downriver on a rare patch of sand, complaining that another agent punctured his raft days earlier. The agent reassures him and negotiates a landing away from gnarly branches.
“Children aboard,” another smuggler shouts to authorities.
As the rafts approached shore Wednesday night, smugglers jumped into the shallow water, lifted children and took the hands of adults lined up single file to get off the rafts. The migrants walked, or were carried, a few steps, and the smuggler turned around for the next passenger without touching dry land.
A 7-year-old girl named Kaylee fought back tears as she bemoaned leaving her phone in the raft. A smuggler tells her she didn’t, and she appears to shrug it off. Her mother’s U.S. phone number is written in black marker on the arm of her shirt.
U.S. agents escort groups of migrants about a half-mile over dirt roads to a dead-end street on the edge of Roma, where other agents at a white folding table examine identification documents, take names and destinations, and answer questions. Children traveling alone are separated from families, and people put valuables in plastic bags.
From there, they get into buses, vans and SUVS. Unaccompanied children are supposed to be held by CBP no more than 72 hours, but they are often held longer because U.S. Health and Human Services lacks space. Health and Human Services is housing children at the Dallas Convention Center and said it will open emergency facilities at venues or military bases in San Antonio, El Paso, San Diego and elsewhere.
The Biden administration expels nearly all single adults without an opportunity to seek asylum under a public health order issued at the start of the pandemic. They’re about 2,200 of the roughly 5,000 people encountered per day in March, according to the Border Patrol official.
About 450 to 500 are unaccompanied minors and the rest are families who are being allowed to stay, at least temporarily, if the children are under 7 and if they can’t immediately be returned to Mexico, which has reduced the number of families it will accept into shelters in the state of Tamaulipas, south of the Rio Grande Valley, the official said.
It’s not unusual to see increases in migrants crossing the border in the spring and summer, and the Border Patrol has faced similar situations in the past. But the official said the large numbers of teens and children and the space limitations resulting from the pandemic have made this year especially difficult.
“The reason this is much different this year than it has been in previous years is one, we are faced with some unique challenges,” he said.