Border Patrol officials said police officers are “overwhelmed” by the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, a spiraling “crisis” that intensified this week when a shootout between rival cartel gangs broke out in a Texas city.
“A week ago, I wouldn’t call it a crisis. Today it meets the definition. We are overwhelmed, ”Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News on Wednesday evening.
“We do not have the resources to prevent the cartels from bringing in illegal aliens, who are bringing drugs, we are in fact in crisis,” he added.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden said he had no plans to travel to the southern border “at the moment” amid an increase in the number of migrants.
Instead, Biden sent a direct message to migrants thinking about crossing the border, saying “Don’t come” when asked by ABC News presenter George Stephanopoulos.
“Don’t leave your city, town or community,” he added.
A senior CBP official told Fox that the situation is untenable.
“The president understands that it is a crisis and that is why he said to the migrants ‘don’t come’,” the official told the network on condition of anonymity.
By undoing former President Donald Trump’s border initiatives, Biden unleashed a flood of illegal migrants across the border, including thousands of unaccompanied children.
In his first month in office, he completed the construction of Trump’s border wall and began to end the “Stay in Mexico” policy, according to which about 71,000 Central American asylum seekers awaited decisions in Mexico.
More than 4,000 migrant children were detained by the Border Patrol until Sunday, with at least 3,000 of them remaining in custody for longer than the 72-hour time limit set by a court order, a US official told the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, described the situation on the border as “difficult”, but did not even call it a crisis, according to Fox News.
“The situation on the southwestern border is difficult,” said Mayorkas. “We are working 24 hours a day to manage it and will continue to do so. This is our job. We are progressing and executing our plan. It will take time and we will not waver in our commitment to success. “
CBP officials made their comments while the media reported that a shooting had taken place near Rome, a Texas community between two rival cartels.
Jaeson Jones, a former captain in the Texas Department of Public Security’s intelligence and counterterrorism division, said it was “time” for the federal government to focus more on the cartel’s growing violence.
Jones told Tucker Carlson Tonight that he regularly witnesses shootings in Miguel Aleman’s Mexican city, Tamaulipas, across Rome’s Rio Grande, Fox News reported.
“This community has been in battle between two cartels for the past two years: Cartel del Golfo – the Gulf Cartel – and Cartel del Noreste – known as Los Zetas by many people,” said Jones.
