The number of migrants attempting to enter the United States illegally via the Southwest border continues to swell, figures from November released by the federal government show. The situation is front and center in Cochise County where the Sheriff’s Office says it has spent an additional $830,000 at the jail for housing, feeding and providing medical attention to inmates arrested in border-related offenses.
The pinch of the rising number of migrants trying to slip into the U.S. has also been felt on the other side of the border in Agua Prieta, Sonora.
Beto Ramos, director of two facilities that help migrants with everything from food and shelter to the preparation of paperwork required to legally seek asylum in this country, said many migrants are being expelled daily through Agua Prieta after being caught by Border Patrol agents in Arizona and Texas.
In the last several weeks, Ramos said about 100 people a day are being kicked back into Agua Prieta by Border Patrol under Title 42 stipulations.
The migrants are people removed by the U.S. government who have recently been in a country where a communicable disease was present. The extent of authority for contagion-related expulsions is set out by law in 42 U.S.C. § 265.
Many of the migrants attempt to re-enter the U.S. and do not seek the aid that Ramos — in conjunction with several churches and volunteers in the area — provides at his facilities. Others show up at the Centro de Recursos Para el Migrante (Resource Center for the Migrant) on the border and ask for help.
“A lot of these people are showing up just before dawn,” Ramos said in a telephone interview this week. “We have several beds on our second floor, but there is no more room up there. We had to put beds outside.”
There are four cots squeezed together in the center’s patio area near the tables where meals are served. The makeshift beds, outfitted with sheets, blankets and pillows, are visible to anyone who crosses into Agua Prieta from Douglas at the port of entry. Ramos said the cold weather has prompted the need for a tent-like cover over the cots in order to protect the migrants from the elements.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, November — the most recent month that statistics are available — produced another rise in the number of migrants encountered along the Southwest border of the U.S. from Texas to California. In November, federal agents encountered 165,783 migrants attempting to enter the U.S. via the Southwest border. In October, there were 124,027.
In the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector in November, which includes Cochise County, agents came in contact with 21,485 migrants, a slight increase from the 19,189 they encountered in October, records show.
The majority of migrants trying to cross into the U.S. are Mexican nationals, federal agents say. Individuals from Guatemala and other countries are the second and third largest groups, followed by Hondurans and El Salvadorans. Federal officials said the majority of migrants encountered are single adults as opposed to family units or unaccompanied children, although records show those groups also are crossing the border.
The increase in illegal crossings by migrants is not lost on Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who says his hands — and his jail — are more than full, courtesy of border-related offenses this past year.
“The impact at the community level continues to increase,” Dannels said in his office this week.
Between July 1 and Dec. 31, Dannels said the Cochise County Jail spent $830,000 solely on inmates — U.S. citizens and illegal migrants — linked to border-related offenses.
“That’s what it cost the taxpayers to house, feed and provide medical care to these inmates,” Dannels said.
The sheriff said the incidents have included responding to calls from Border Patrol agents asking the Sheriff’s Office for assistance near the border, to ranchers and business owners calling the office for help because of migrants trespassing on their properties.
Since April, when the Sheriff’s Office began tracking its calls for service to reflect border-related incidents, officials tallied 743 such calls between April 1 and Dec. 31, Dannels said.
“That’s a very conservative number because we weren’t tracking that in the first three months of the year,” Dannels said.
One of the border-related incidents was handled by the sheriff himself two weeks ago. Dannels said he was on patrol and spotted a speeding car one evening at about 11. He stopped the driver and discovered two teenagers in the vehicle who had been recruited by the cartel via social media to transport several migrants to Phoenix, Dannels said.
“They said they were getting paid $1,000 per migrant,” Dannels said.
The increase in illegal crossings can be seen on cameras the Sheriff’s Office has strategically placed along the border with Mexico.
In the last year there has been so much activity that National Guard troops were sent by Gov. Doug Ducey to help the Sheriff’’s Office monitor the cameras.
Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, the cameras spotted 43,229 individuals illegally entering Cochise County from Mexico, Dannels said. At least 35% of those individuals were arrested. The other 65% got away. Among those caught were 51 drug mules, Dannels said. Additionally, 800 pounds of narcotics were seized.
Dannels said a lot of people have told him they don’t believe Cochise County has an issue with illegal migrants.
“A lot of people tell me they don’t see it,” Dannels said. “That’s because we don’t have (migrant) kids standing on corners with their moms like you see in Yuma and Del Rio (Texas).
“What we have is people camouflaged from head to toe and they will do whatever they have to do to get through Cochise County and they do it at the expense of every citizen here.”
The sheriff said every month hundreds of people recruited by the cartels are driving through Cochise County to transport migrants to Phoenix. He said these individuals just want to get through the area as quickly as they can. One of those individuals, Felix Mendez, 16, of Mesa, is accused of transporting migrants and of killing a 65-year-old Benson woman who investigators said Mendez crashed into on State Route 90 as he tried to get away from authorities.
Mendez is in custody at the Cochise County Jail facing a bevy of charges, among them first degree murder.
The sheriff and other local law enforcement officials have repeatedly said migrants who make it to Phoenix are nothing more than servants who are forced to work off the debt they owe to the cartel.
“This is a public safety, national security and a humanitarian issue,” Dannels said. “These people are being exploited by criminal enterprises.
“Until we have a collective effort from state, local and federal officials working together, with a solid message of secure borders with the rule of law being applied, we’re going to have this. Right now we have an open border philosophy and it’s impacting our rural communities.”
