U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday that 301 migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border from October 2017 to April 2018 were found not to have a valid parent-child relationship despite posing as a family unit.
“Ninety of those cases came from Rio Grande Valley … sector, 180 aliens out of that specific sector that were affected specifically with fraud,” Brian Hastings, CBP’s lead field coordinator, told reporters during a conference call Tuesday.
CBP did not provide the number of fraud cases since Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a zero tolerance policy for illegal entrants who crossed into the U.S. between ports of entry with children, which started in April.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Tuesday told a group of sheriffs the department did not “have the luxury of pretending all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are in fact a family.”
[Related: ‘Offensive,’ ‘not true’: Kirstjen Nielsen defends border family separation stance]
“Fraud would generally be those posing that aren’t family members. There may be some other circumstances in there, but for the most part that is fraud,” Hastings added.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story reported 301 minors. That was changed to reflect 301 minors and adults.
