Largest-ever group of migrant families tunnels under Yuma border fence

The largest single group of migrant families and minors ever recorded in the Yuma area tunneled underneath a border fence and voluntarily turned themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents, according to Customs and Border Protection officials in Arizona.

A group of 376 migrants, composed almost overwhelmingly of Guatemalan families and children seeking asylum,*breached the U.S.-Mexico border just before noon Monday, approximately 4½ miles east of the San Luis commercial port of entry.

Customs and Border Protection officials disclosed details of the incident on Friday, releasing videos and photos showing the migrants walking along the U.S. side of the border fence and waiting in line for agents to process them.

Agent Jose Garibay, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Yuma Sector, said that migrants, with the help of smugglers, dug seven holes in the sandy soil underneath the bollard-style fence and the metal plates welded to the bottom of the barriers.

"The bollards, when they were put in, they didn't have concrete footers, because it wasn't designed to stop from digging under, it was designed to stop the vehicle traffic," Garibay said.

The group included 176 minors, Customs and Border Protection said. Thirty of the minors*were unaccompanied.

Overall, it is the largest, single group of families and minors ever recorded since the agency began seeing a surge in the arrival of these migrants in the past two years, Garibay said.

Border agents in the Yuma area have routinely encountered large numbers of migrants crossing en masse.

The numbers and frequency have only increased since the area emerged as one of the busiest routes for Central Americans to reach to the United States.

The number of families and minors crossing through Yuma began to rise at the start of 2018, breaking records month after month. The government began tracking the data in 2013. This trend is seen nationwide, with historic numbers of families reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.

In fiscal year 2018, which ended in September, nearly three-quarters of all migrants encountered by border agents along the Yuma sector were families or minors.

These two groups are single-handedly driving up the number of apprehensions in the area, which is now at the highest level since 2008.

Stakeholders and migrant advocates on the ground don't know why more and more Central American migrant families and minors are crossing through the Yuma area.

But border officials said they know what's behind the surge in their arrivalsto the U.S.-Mexico border. "They know that if you travel with a child, or there's a child with you when you cross, then you have to be released within 20 days," Garibay said. "That's what these smugglers are relying on. And that's what these individuals are relying on.

"Which is why you see such a large number —176 of these individuals are children, because they know the loopholes in our immigration system and they know how to exploit it, and that's what they do," he said.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2019/01/18/group-376-migrants-tunnels-under-yuma-border/2613961002/