Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz delivered a devastating picture of the border on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that a majority of sectors along the U.S.-Mexico boundary are not secure and saying it was a mistake to stop wall construction.
Chief Ortiz pleaded for Congress to give him more agents, and asked for new tools to deliver “consequences” to migrants. He named the kinds of policies the Trump administration had in place by 2020, but which were erased by President Biden.
He was testifying to the House Homeland Security Committee, which was meeting in Pharr, Texas, as part of an effort to hear directly from people on the ground about the chaos at the border. If they pre-apply, they can be let in under Mr. Mayorkas’s power of “parole.” If they don’t pre-apply, Mr. Mayorkas has vowed to deport them.
Other troubling trends included an increase in vulnerable juveniles traveling without parents. CBP said it encountered 10,870, or 16% more than in January. Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent and senior official in the union that represents agents, recounted some of the horrifying cases he’s come across. He said one recent case saw a young boy who’d been abandoned along the Rio Grande, with wet clothes in 40-degree weather. His parents were already in the U.S., and he was being brought to reunite with them.
He pointed to an accident his deputies handled where three illegal immigrants sustained minor injuries. They called the Border Patrol, but he said agents declined to do anything. He called Immigration and Customs Enforcement and they, too, declined.
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