YUMA, Ariz. — Three women and one child recently went undetected as they illegally crossed from Mexico to Arizona through the Colorado River and walked past a group of five congressmen who had been there to see smuggling activity.
A Washington Examiner reporter was at the border during the Tuesday night incident when a group of four, who had just waded through the shallow water came up through the brush, walked up to a Border Patrol road less than a few hundred feet from the river.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., was leading a tour for four Republican congressmen — Matt Gaetz of Florida, John Joyce of Pennsylvania, Pete Stauber of Minnesota, and Dusty Johnson of South Dakota — who were seeing the southern border for the first time.
During the hourlong excursion, the group of women waded across the water and was able to stay out of sight of lawmakers due to the overgrown water plants and brush on the edge of the water.
A retired couple who lives on the other side of the dirt road that separates their home from the river and brush said they were the ones who flagged down a nearby Border Patrol agent.
“I didn’t call anybody. I was sitting in there watching TV — knocking on the door. There’s four of them here. They wanted aqua so I went and got ’em a bottle of water,” said Dennis, who did not share his last name.
“I walked ’em out here — said they need to go up there,” Dennis said, pointing to the dirt road agents use to drive up and down the border. “Said they don’t want to go up there. Then Border Patrol came.”
His wife, Barbara, said she had been walking around by the road with their three dogs when the four people approached their home.
“I’m trying to motion them, ‘No, they gotta go up here to be picked up,’ because that’s where they usually get picked up. They usually turn themselves in,” said Barbara. “They were nice and smiling and all that, but they were bound to walk to Yuma.”
The woman said the four did not speak English and she could not determine where the four people were originally from. She said maybe El Salvador, since one was wearing a hat with the country’s name on it.
A Border Patrol agent pulled up right in front of the Washington Examiner reporter and spoke with the group for a few minutes before asking them to get in the back of his pickup truck.
“So my husband walked up there — normally law enforcement’s up there. The guy happened to be right where Dennis could motion him to come here and point down the road, they were right here heading down the [other] road,” she said.
Barbara said she and her husband have lived on the border in their current house for 5 1/2 years. They said incidents like the one on Tuesday evening were normal, but that most individuals or groups who come over the river illegally just stand on the dirt road and wait for agents to find them instead of knocking on their door.
“We had four of them that went down there the other day. We had one that was higher than a kite was out here yelling at things,” Dennis said.
“In the past several months, it’s getting to be more and more,” said Barbara. “It’s pretty much like a sieve right here because all we have are vehicle barriers and the river is very shallow right here. You can just wade across.”
Dennis estimated 50 to 500 people are coming across “right there” daily. His wife said nearly all are families and they see children of all ages in the groups.
Justin Kallinger, spokesman for Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, told the Washington Examiner Wednesday that “99%” of all illegal crossers in the region have been smuggled to the U.S. and did not arrive at the border as part of a caravan.
“They’re utilizing Border Patrol and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Enforcement and Removal Operations arm] as their transportation from the border into the United States, where they meet up with the other smugglers in the United States,” Kallinger said.
Barbara said she and Dennis often see groups of 25 people or so, and that Border Patrol uses contracted buses to transport the larger groups to one of its three regional stations, where the people are processed.
“Most of them turn themselves in. Of course, if there’s nobody up there directly to turn them into, they’re not gonna,” she said.
She said she does not feel less safe despite more people coming through or near her property on what she described as a daily basis.
“It’s mostly families, and I don’t think they’re out to do us any harm,” she said.
