In a part of the United States that is so remote it's where rockets like the one that carried Jeff Bezos to space are launched, men dressed in camouflage sneak across the border with the hope of evading authorities.
While southeast Texas is the epicenter of the southern border’s illegal migration crisis, West Texas faces a growing problem that is unlike those in other parts of the border. In the Border Patrol’s Big Bend region of West Texas, which stretches from Del Rio to El Paso, groups of men cross day and night and then spend up to a week trekking through the mountains and desert to avoid detection and meet up with drivers waiting on the highway.
Unlike the hundreds of thousands of families who crossed in the Rio Grande Valley this past year with the goal of surrendering to agents and being released into the country, the men coming over in West Texas are trying not to get caught. They wear camouflage and sometimes attach pieces of carpet to the bottom of their shoes to avoid leaving behind tracks.
Compared to southeastern Texas, the western side is several hundred miles further away for migrants coming from south of Mexico, but the upside is that it is the only area of the border without even one mile of a wall. All other regions have varying amounts of 18- to 30-foot-tall steel border fencing, but nowhere along the 517 miles of the Big Bend region does a border wall prevent people from getting across.
"Our area varies a little bit different from the Del Rio Sector because instead of them just crossing over within minutes, it takes days, and there's specific areas that they can cross," said Lt. Elizabeth Carter, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety officers working with Border Patrol in West Texas. "They're literally risking their lives to cross illegally in the first place and then to make that travel — anywhere from five to six days."
Within the region’s western side, Border Patrol agents based out of the towns of Van Horn, Texas, and Sierra Blanca, Texas, have encountered the large majority of illegal immigrants in recent months. The apprehensions are sometimes no more than a matter of miles from the site of the launch of the rocket that carried the Blue Origin founder to space in July. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Courtesy U.S. Customs and Border Protection |
Border Patrol agents apprehended 31 Guatemalans wearing camouflage Tuesday morning.
Agents assigned to the Big Bend Sector’s Sanderson Station said they were patrolling near the Rio Grande when they spotted footprints heading north.
As the agents tracked the footprints on the ground, CBP Air and Marine Operations aircrew and air units with the Texas Department of Public Safety conducted aerial surveillance.
Around 1 p.m. Tuesday, agents on the ground encountered several individuals dressed in camouflage attempting to hide in thick brush. The air units were able to locate several other individuals in the surrounding area. --->READ MORE HERE
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