Border patrol agents from the Rio Grande Valley handed out Christmas gifts Friday to immigrant children who were being held at a processing center on the border, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
“These children are thousands of miles from home, and most of them are essentially alone for the holidays as they came here without their parents or another family member,” Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla Jr. said Tuesday. “Christmas is a tough time to be without your family, so management at the CPC got together and raised money to purchase gifts for the kids and help make Christmas better for them.”
CBP said Santa Claus was at the Centralized Processing Center on Friday to greet immigrant children and hand out gifts. Treats made by border agents’ wives were also given to the children.
Apprehensions of unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, is on the rise again in fiscal year 2016, after a drop was seen in 2015.
In the Rio Grande sector, UAC apprehensions are up more than 100 percent, as nearly 6,500 have been taken in so far this fiscal year. Overall UAC apprehensions at the southwest border are up more than 100 percent this year, and in some sectors of the border, apprehensions are up more than 200 percent.
The numbers of children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras exploded in fiscal year 2014, leading to what both parties agreed was a crisis at the border. That led the Obama administration to send more resources to the border, but also to talk with leaders from those three countries to convince them to work domestically to lower those numbers.
Those efforts almost cut the number of UACs in half in fiscal year 2015, although they were still elevated, and 2016 is on pace to match the numbers seen in 2014.
