Border Patrol Braces for Illegal Immigrant Surge as Cargo Train Travels Through Mexico

Immigrants ride on top of a cargo train crossing northeast Mexico on Sept. 21, 2023. Reuters/Screenshot via NTD

Border Patrol is bracing for a surge of illegal immigrants as another cargo train with hundreds of migrants on top approaches the U.S. border.

The train arrived in Juarez, Mexico, on April 24. It was the third mass influx of migrants to the area in three days, according to Border Report.

The train originated from Chihuahua City, where authorities forced hundreds of migrants out of the tents, which they set up behind a convenience store near the train tracks. The encampment was established over several weeks as immigration officials in Mexico forced them off of trains bound for Juarez, Border Report said.

“We have seen multiple small groups of people arriving at different times throughout the night and day,” Claudio Herrera-Baeza, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Paso, told Border Report. All these migrants are being pushed by disinformation on social media. ... They believe that once they cross this border they will put in for asylum and be free to go. The reality is these migrants are going to be processed for removal.”

For years, migrants trying to get to the United States have crossed through Mexico on cargo trains. Collectively, these cargo train caravans have come to be known as “La Bestia” (The Beast), because of the risk of injury or even death while riding the rail.

“We are processing every single one because we need to know who is coming in,” Mr. Herrera-Baeza said. “We have learned from previous migrant surges over the years, we have the capacity to process these migrants in an efficient and humane way.”

Some migrants told Border Report they were just waiting for the “right time” to cross into the United States.

Former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair contends that Mr. Herrera-Baeza is “pushing propaganda for the Department of Homeland Security.”

Mr. Blair, a senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, has over 10 years of experience as a U.S. Border Patrol agent. He also served in the U.S. Army for 22 years.

Mr. Blair told The Epoch Times that the narrative being pushed by border patrol “is not true.”

At best, he said Mr. Herrera-Baeza’s announcement is a “half-truth.”

While Border Patrol may be processing the illegal immigrants who enter the United States and apply for asylum, they are also “releasing them en masse.”

“Border patrol has created a procedure of trying to process illegal immigrants as fast and as efficiently as possible to get them into the United States,” Mr. Blair explained. “They have created a conveyor belt into the United States.”

“If you go to San Diego, they’re doing street releases,” he said.

At least 125,000 illegal immigrants were released from detention in San Diego “without proper vetting,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond told the New York Post.

There are about 3.5 million illegal immigration cases pending in federal immigration courts, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

Over 1.2 million illegal immigrants have filed for asylum in fiscal year 2024 and have been released into the United States to await a hearing.

The average wait time for an asylum hearing is almost four years as of March 20, according to TRAC.

‘It’s Coordinated’

In the meantime, Mr. Blair said, these illegal immigrants are wandering the United States. What is happening at the border is not by accident, he said.

“It’s coordinated,” Mr. Blair asserted. “The entire thing is coordinated.”

The entire migration process, he said, is facilitated by government entities, cartels, other illegal immigrants, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Red Cross and Catholic Charities.

Not only are NGOs providing illegal immigrants with food and shelter when they arrive at the U.S. border, but they are also funding the illegal immigrants’ journeys, according to a report from the Capital Research Center.

The NGOs provide debit cards, legal counsel, maps to show them the way, and scripts of what to say to Border Patrol agents to improve their chances of getting in, the report said.

The flood of illegal immigrants crossing the border is also being driven by policies put in place by President Joe Biden’s administration, Mr. Blair said.

The Declaration of North America—a nonbinding agreement struck by President Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January 2023—includes an effort “to advance labor mobility in North America, particularly regarding regular pathways.”

This built upon the tenets of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, an agreement among almost two dozen nations, which described illegal immigration as “irregular international migration” and concluded it “required a regional approach.”

Mr. Blair said regular pathways “is just their term for a different pathway other than what is currently provided by our immigration system.”

“They’re creating a parallel immigration system,” he said, “and since then the United States, Mexico, and Canada have welcomed record numbers of illegal aliens.”

A 2022 memo from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided guidance to attorneys regarding “the enforcement of civil immigration laws and the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” which Mr. Blair said was another way of describing “catch and release.”

“These policies were designed to encourage illegal aliens throughout the world to leave their countries of origin and countries of citizenship and come into the United States for economic benefit, not to seek asylum,” Mr. Blair asserted.

In fiscal year 2017, Border Patrol had 310,531 encounters with people trying to cross the border, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. By the end of 2023, Border Patrol was seeing a record-breaking number of encounters at the U.S.–Mexico border.

So far in fiscal year 2024, there have been over 1 million encounters.

“That shows this is all policy-driven,” said Mr. Blair. “Sure, there are economic problems in Venezuela. However, we can see through patterns in the refugee migrations that they did not come to the United States until those policies were enacted by the federal government.”

Temporary Protected Status granted by the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also helps facilitate the increase in illegal immigrants coming to America, he said.

Mr. Blair noted that the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program—announced in January 2023—inspired a massive increase in immigration.

The program provides a pathway to the United States for up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and allows certain individuals from those countries to stay temporarily without an immigrant or nonimmigrant visa.

“Those three things—catch and release, temporary protected states, and the new parole program—are really what skyrocketed the weaponized mass migration into the United States,” Mr. Blair said.

‘A False Narrative’

In March, a large group of illegal immigrants shoved their way past Texas Army National Guard troops near El Paso, Texas, at a spot known as Gate 36.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Orlando Marrero-Rubio reiterated the message given by Mr. Herrera-Baeza, telling the outlet the migrants are “just following instructions from social media.”

Mr. Marrero-Rubio blamed the transnational criminal organizations that are “giving them false hope and false information of a safe passage into the United States.”

This, too, is “a false narrative,” Mr. Blair said.

“What the Department of Homeland Security is trying to do is blame the Mexican cartels,” Mr. Blair said. “What’s actually happening is the illegal aliens themselves are pushing it on social media, saying, ‘Hey guys, we got through.’ They are the ones telling their families to come up, and it’s spreading like wildfire.”

“Of course, the cartels are advertising their services. But they’re just taking the low-hanging fruit,” he said, adding that statements from Border Patrol spokespeople are “propaganda” and that “they are only regurgitating information from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They’re trying to shift blame to smuggling organizations when they should be shifting blame on themselves.”

“It’s weaponized mass migration,” he said.

Mr. Blair referred to articles from the U.S. Naval Institute and Foreign Affairs magazine discussing weaponized migration and how governments use this tactic to effect policy goals that they couldn’t accomplish through other means.

“As you read these studies,” Mr. Blair advised, “just think of our own border, because the Biden administration is using this same playbook.”

The Epoch Times contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.