New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his security detail violated Mexican and U.S. immigration laws by crossing the southern border on foot during a June visit near El Paso, Texas, according to Trump administration officials.
[Update: De Blasio’s office: Border Patrol is wrong about the New York mayor’s border visit]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection made the allegations against de Blasio and his team in a June 25 letter sent by chief patrol agent Aaron Hull for the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, and was obtained by the Associated Press.
The letter outlined how de Blasio was denied entry into a holding facility to see where children who were separated from their families while crossing illegally were being held. The mayor and his security detail went into Mexico and crossed back into the U.S. in order to get a view of the facility.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent noticed the group on the Rio Grande River flood plain taking photos of the holding facility, and confronted them on whether there was a Border Patrol worker there to authorize their visit, and the group said there was not.
De Blasio’s camp has said his movement around the border was approved.
“The mayor crossed the border with the direct approval and under the supervision of the border patrol supervisor at this port of entry,” de Blasio’s spokesperson Eric Phillips said in an email Tuesday night to the AP. “Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie and an obvious attempt by someone to attack the Mayor because of his advocacy for families being ripped apart at the border by the Trump administration.”
De Blasio’s visit to the southern border was part of a larger migration by about 20 other mayors from around the country in late June.
The visit came after Trump signed an order to stop family separation at the border, following public outcry over the influx in separation ensued in relation to Trump’s zero tolerance illegal immigration policy.
