The surge of migrants at the southern border now is overwhelming Texas state troopers patrolling an area previously affected little by the crisis, it was reported Monday.
Law enforcement officials told the Washington Examiner that areas in west Texas have been overrun by groups of people crossing the border and trying to evade capture.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have shifted more than 1,000 officers from their normal duties to the border since March. Vehicles and helicopters also were moved to the area to assist Border Patrol in what had been the quietest place along the state’s 1,250-mile border with Mexico, the Examiner said.
Most migrants at other border areas, such as in the Rio Grande Valley where families and unaccompanied children attempted to enter, apparently want to be apprehended before being released into the country.
The Examiner said migrants wear camouflage and even attach pieces of carpet to the bottom of their shoes to avoid leaving behind tracks.
Migrants arriving in west Texas often are led across the border by smugglers working for Mexican cartels, and are told where to walk. They’re given supplies to last them up to a week outside, the Examiner reported.
DPS has apprehended 77,500 migrants who came across the border statewide and transferred them to Border Patrol custody, the Examiner said.
The agency also has arrested 9,100 people on criminal charges since March, which includes human smugglers who pick up the migrants once they make it to a highway, as well as migrants with criminal convictions, the Examiner said.
"I've personally never seen any numbers like we've been seeing. It's definitely an increase of activity," DPS officer Lt. Elizabeth Carter, who has been based in west Texas for 12 years, told the Examiner.
"Usually we try to track them before they get into the vehicle because we want to prevent a pursuit from happening. Again, it's a danger to the community."
Many Border Patrol agents have been pulled from the area and transferred to areas hit hardest by the crisis — e.g. Yuma, Arizona, and Del Rio, Texas — as migrants surged the border after President Joe Biden took office.
Border enforcement also has been hurt by the loss of other states’ National Guard members who have been pulled out due to financial constraints.
Late last week, a group of sheriffs in 17 states called for the firing of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to secure the southern border.
The Western States Sheriffs Association (WSSA) denounced the Biden administration's "complete and total breakdown" of immigration law enforcement on the border under Mayorkas in a position paper obtained by The Epoch Times.
"After witnessing this disaster over the past several months and listening to the continued rhetoric and intellectual dishonesty from Secretary Mayorkas, The Western States Sheriffs Association, and its membership must emphatically take our position of having NO confidence in the ability of the Secretary Mayorkas, and his leadership within the Department of Homeland Security, to affect any positive outcome on this matter," the WSSA wrote.
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