EDINBURG, TEXAS — Migrants trying to get into the U.S. are doing so in droves recently. One border patrol veteran said it’s because immigrants are worried Trump will start building his wall once he is sworn into office in January.
CNN reports that recent months have seen an increase in the number of people caught illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico, from 37,048 in August, and 39,501 in September, to 46,195 in October.
Detention facilities that used to see 31 to 34,000 individuals on average are now holding 41,000, most of them families and unaccompanied children.
As a result, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has announced in a press release that it plans to send an extra 150 agents from Tucson, Arizona, and San Diego and Del Rio, Texas to processing centers near the border. They will be stationed there temporarily, for around two months.
These agents will be screening and classifying the undocumented migrants in the McAllen and Weslaco centers, in effect freeing up local agents to focus on border security.
A similar surge occurred in the South Texas border in 2014, after hundreds of thousands of migrants escaped Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to seek refuge in the US, reports Reuters.
