A group of about 600 migrants — including one little girl dressed up like Santa Claus — entered into the US Saturday as part of a year-end surge across the southern border.
The giant group, mainly from Venezuela and Honduras, was the largest The Post has seen at Eagle Pass, Tex. this week, where a makeshift open-air transit center processed more than 10,000 people in the last few days alone.
On Monday, US Customs and Border Protection officers encountered more than 12,600 illegal immigrants along the US-Mexico border, a single-day record, as asylum seekers rush to beat a new Texas state law that could criminalize such unauthorized entries.
Saturday’s well-organized crossing began in the pre-dawn darkness, as family groups and individual adults gathered on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, then waded across the shallow river, some holding cell phones aloft to light their way.
As dawn broke, The Post watched the hour-long parade as migrants left the waist-deep water, then walked single file along the riverbank on the US side
They draped blankets and coats over the concertina wire to make a pathway through the sharp barbs, then clambered over, to be met by state and federal agents who escorted them to a holding area for processing.
One child had decked herself out in Santa hat, striped red dress, and pink fuzzy slippers for her journey with what appeared to be a seven-member family group. --->READ MORE HERE
Eagle Pass, Texas — By 6:30 a.m., there were scores of migrants, including parents carrying young children and babies, between a seemingly endless line of razor wire and the Rio Grande, pleading with Texas National Guardsmen to grant them safe passage into the U.S.
"Please, let us through," a woman in the river clamored in Spanish. "Let us pass," another migrant yelled. "There are kids in the water," a man said.
The migrants' pleas, and the cries of children, quickly drowned out instructions from the guardsmen armed with rifles. Pointing their flashlights towards the river, the guardsmen told the migrants in their broken Spanish to turn back.
"Crossing here is illegal," a guardsman noted.
"It's not safe," another visibly distressed National Guard member said as she watched migrants attempt to get through the wire.
A young man screamed when he appeared to cut himself on the wire. A mother was told by other migrants to calm down as she watched her son's clothing become tangled with the wire. Instructed to only intervene in extraordinary cases, such as life-or-death situations, the Texas National Guard soldiers could do little but watch.
Despite their struggles, the migrants gradually made their way through the concertina wire on that Wednesday morning. The Guardsmen, who are not authorized to enforce federal immigration law, directed them to walk along a dirt road to be processed by Border Patrol agents, who were nowhere to be seen. The migrants lined up and started walking.
The day before, this reporter witnessed a similar scene. Dozens of migrants, including young children, crawled into the U.S. through a small breach in the concertina wire. While some women cried, a mother helped pull other migrants, including a boy, underneath the wire. At the same spot, a man pushed his young son through the wire before handing his daughter, a toddler, to her brother. As the daughter cried, the boy helped his father get past the wire.
The migrants changed after entering the U.S., leaving behind wet pants and shirts along the dirt road, which was littered with countless heaps of abandoned clothes and trash. --->READ MORE HERE
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