The Department of Homeland Security has continued to surge hundreds of supplemental personnel to the border even as the number of people who illegally crossed and presented at ports of entry in June declined dramatically.
Manuel Padilla, chief of the department’s Interagency Border Emergency Cell, told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview 500 DHS personnel were sent to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; El Paso, Texas; and Yuma, Arizona, to assist Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the height of the deployments this spring.
The number of nonborder personnel deployed south fluctuates day to day but remained around the same levels in late April.
“There’s still over 500 DHS personnel being deployed,” a senior DHS official told the Washington Examiner Monday afternoon. The official said “there’s no discussion” to stymie those efforts, even after the number of people arriving at the border dropped by more than 37,000 in June to 94,500, from 132,000 in May.
Padilla said the southern border is still in “crisis” and additional personnel are necessary to transport people in custody to medical facilities, prepare food, and other standard tasks. Those borrowed personnel free up agents and officers to return to normal responsibilities.
He added the border crisis — as the Trump administration has described the state of affairs — will not cease until the number of people in custody at DHS facilities matches the number each facility is supposed to hold. In early June, CBP reported 20,000 in custody despite room in facilities for 4,000.
CBP, which includes Border Patrol and port officers, is the first agency that encounters migrants on the border. Individuals are then either released from custody into the U.S. or turned over to ICE for deportation or held there before also being released into the U.S.
The downturn comes weeks after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to step up the country’s enforcement efforts to curtail people traveling through Mexico to the United States.
Padilla has returned from Washington to San Antonio, Texas, where he is managing the deployments as part of a longer-term operation, as well as carrying out his regular duties as director of the department’s Joint Task Force-West.
