A border agent who patrols the Rio Grand Valley in Texas told the Senate Wednesday that illegal immigrants continue to stream into the U.S. from Mexico because they are confident they’ll be released quickly by U.S. authorities.
“Most believe that they will either not be caught, or even if they are caught, they will not be deported back to their home country,” Agent Chris Cabrera told the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee in prepared testimony. “The UACs and family groups we detain are acutely aware of the fact we will not hold them until they are adjudicated.”
“UAC” is short for “unaccompanied alien children,” and more than 66,000 of them were apprehended in fiscal year 2014. That number has been cut nearly in half from those crisis levels, and in fiscal year 2015, which just ended, 35,000 UACs were caught.
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But Cabrera said those numbers are still too high, and said thousands of children and families continue to brave the journey because of the low chances of being caught. He said it’s well known by these immigrants that the U.S. is not detaining and deporting people, but is instead catching and releasing them.
“They know that they will be released and issued a Notice to Appear (NTA),” Cabrera said. “What we have right now is essentially a catch-and-release policy. This coupled with violence and instability in their home country is driving the continued flow of UACs and family groups.”
“Until we hold them until we adjudicate their cases they will continue to come,” he said.
Cabrera also noted that the ongoing flow of UACs into the U.S. can have other disastrous impacts on border security. For example, he said that when child immigrants come across a certain area, it’s hard for the U.S. Border Patrol to focus on other priorities.
“The cartels knew that a group of 30 UACs can literally tie up an entire shift of agents in my area,” he said. “All we were doing was tending to the children and the entire border in our area was completely unguarded.”
Cabrera, who is also a member of the National Border Patrol Council, said the solution for ending the problem is to ensure all illegal immigrants are detained and deported.
“If they knew that if they were caught they would be detained, adjudicated and repatriated to their home country, the calculus changes dramatically,” he said. “I guarantee that if this was the case, the numbers would fall dramatically.”
He also said his sector is only catching 40 percent of all illegal immigrants, and said more agents are needed.
“I am happy to discuss this in greater detail during the question and answer period, but I believe we are at least 5,000 agents below where we need to be to effectively secure the southern border.”
Read his testimony here:
