Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Tucson Sector’s agents see surge in migrants
‘People from all over the world,’ official says
ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — Border Patrol agents ordered the young Senegalese men to wait in the scant shade of desert scrub brush while they loaded a more vulnerable group of migrants — a family with three children from India — into a white van for the short trip in triple-degree heat to a canopied field intake center.
The migrants were among hundreds who have been trudging this summer in the scorching sun and through open storm gates in the border wall to U.S. soil, following a remote corridor in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that is among the most desolate and dangerous areas in the Arizona borderlands. Temperatures hit 118 degrees just as smugglers began steering migrants from Africa and Asia here to request asylum.
Suddenly, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which oversees the area, in July became the busiest sector along the U.s-mexico border for the first time since 2008. It has seen migrants from faraway countries like Pakistan, China and Mauritania, where social media is drawing young people to the new route to the border that starts in Nicaragua. There are large numbers from Ecuador, Bangladesh and Egypt, and more traditional border crossers from Mexico and Central America.
“Right now we are encountering people from all over the world,” said Border Patrol Deputy Chief Justin De La Torre, of the Tucson Sector. “It has been a real emergency here, a real trying situation.”
The patrol is calling on other agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration, for help in getting migrants “out of the elements and into our processing centers as quickly as possible,” De La Torre said.
During a recent visit, journalists saw close to 100 migrants arrive in just four hours at the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona, inside Organ Pipe, as temperatures hit 110 degrees. The next morning, several hundred more migrants lined up along the wall to turn themselves in.
“Welcome to America, that’s good person,” a young Senegalese man said in his limited English, beaming as he crunched across the desert floor after Tom Wingo, a humanitarian aid volunteer, gave him some water and snacks. “I am very, very happy for you.”
The storm gates in the towering steel wall have been open since mid-june because of rains during the monsoon season. Rushing water from heavy downpours can damage closed gates, the wall, a rocky border road, and flora and fauna. But migrants get in even when the gates are closed, sometimes by breaking locks or slipping through gaps in the wall.
Agents from the Border Patrol’s small Ajo Station a half-hour’s drive north of the border encountered several large groups the first weekend of August, including one of 533 people from 17 countries in the area that includes the national monument, an expanse of rugged desert scattered with cactus, creosote and whip-like ocotillo.
The Tucson Sector registered 39,215 arrests in July, up 60 percent from June. Officials attribute the sudden influx to false advertising by smugglers who tell migrants it’s easier to cross here and get released into the United States.
Migrants are taken first to the intake center, where agents collect people’s names, countries of origin and other information before they are moved to the Ajo Station some 30 miles up a two-lane state highway.
Arrests for illegally crossing anywhere along the nearly 2,000-mile U.s.-mexico border soared 33 percent from June to July, according to U.S. government figures, reversing a plunge after new asylum restrictions were introduced in May.
President Joe Biden’s administration notes illegal crossings were still down 27 percent that month from July 2022 and credits the carrot-andstick approach that expands legal pathways while punishing migrants who enter illegally.
De La Torre said most migrants in the area request asylum, something far from guaranteed with the recent restrictions.
The Ajo Station’s area of responsibility is the busiest inside the Tucson Sector, De La Torre said.
It includes the border areas of Organ Pipe and the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, isolated areas with rough roads and scarce water and shade. They include the Devil’s Highway region, where 14 border crossers in a group of 26 died in 2001 after smugglers abandoned them.
CBP rescues by air and land along the border are soaring this year, with 28,537 counted during the 10-month period ending July 31. That compares with 22,075 for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, the agency said. There were 2,776 migrant rescues in July.
The rescues continued in August, including one especially busy day when a Black Hawk helicopter hoisted a 15-year-old Guatemalan boy from a remote southern Arizona mountain to safety. A short time later, the chopper rescued a Guatemalan man who called 911 from the vast Tohono O’odham Nation just east of Organ Pipe.
Some activists recently protested outside the Ajo Station, saying migrants kept in an outdoor enclosure there didn’t have enough shade. Patrol officials say that only adult men waiting to be transported to bigger facilities for processing are kept outside for a few hours, and under a large canopy with fans. Women, children and vulnerable people stay inside. The average wait time the facility is 15 hours.