Human smugglers flooded a portion of the Texas-Mexico border with Central American families and unaccompanied children earlier this week, which officials described as an attempt to overwhelm U.S. Border Patrol and get adults who wanted to avoid getting arrested into the country while agents were busy elsewhere.
In the early morning hours Tuesday, agents based at the McAllen Station in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of southern Texas came across a group of 170 people that was comprised of all families or children traveling without parents.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the patrol’s parent agency, said the group “sought the first Border Patrol agents they could find to turn themselves in.”
The massive apprehension forced the sector to pull agents from other parts of the valley to help process and detain everyone in the group.
“As agents prepared the group for transport, the criminal organizations took advantage of the limited resources and simultaneously attempted to smuggle multiple other groups whom actively attempted to evade apprehension,” CBP said in a statement.
RGV border officials then called in backup from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the Hidalgo and Mission regions.
A Border Patrol official who spoke to the Washington Examiner on Thursday said the 170-person group was trying to get apprehended because under current federal rules, they will not be deported or prosecuted for illegal entry.
“We could be right at the river banks looking right at them and they’re still going to bring them across,” a Border Patrol spokesman said about the smugglers during a phone interview Thursday.
The Flores settlement agreement and Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act mandate both families and unaccompanied minors from countries under than Mexico and Canada cannot be turned away or arrested.
The majority of families and children apprehended are released from federal custody and told to show up for immigration hearings on their asylum requests but do not show and disappear into the country, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official testified before the Senate this week.
CBP reported a similar incident Wednesday in which two caravans of families and kids, comprised of 193 people, were taken into custody. In recent weeks, groups of 100 to 200 illegal immigrants have been found at various points of the border.
Everyone in this group was determined to be from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
[Also read: Trump administration unable to locate another 1,500 immigrant children released from custody]
