“People are traveling across hemispheres to attempt to illegally enter the US, using the same pathways as the Central Americans,” Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Fox News reported.
He said a caravan-size group of migrants flooded across the border each week in just a single sector — what he called the latest indicator of the growing migration crisis on the southern border. “Much media attention has focused on caravans coming across from Central America,” Karisch added. “But the fact is that RGV is receiving caravan-equivalent numbers every seven days.”
Karisch said Border Patrol has apprehended more asylum-seeking families crossing the border in the first five months of fiscal 2019 than during all of fiscal 2012. Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 76,000 migrants in February and expected to apprehend more than 100,000 in March as the weather warmed.
In the Rio Grande Valley alone, Karisch said that at the current pace, they would have more than 260,000 apprehensions in his sector by the end of fiscal 2019. There were 162,000 in the valley last year.
The feds on Tuesday revealed that 103,492 asylum seekers and other undocumented immigrants were apprehended at the southern border in March — more than double the number last March and an increase of more than 26,000 from February.
Customs and Border Protection officials had predicted that the number would hit triple figures because of the huge surge of desperate Central American families seeking asylum in the US. They also said the number could continue to rise as the weather warms and more people are willing to risk the perilous trek through Mexico.
President Trump has railed against the rising numbers and is searching for ways to stanch the flow. He’s threatened to close the border down if Mexico doesn’t act to prevent undocumented immigrants from seeking asylum in the US, which they are entitled to do by law.
 |
| Bastard Barack Obama ignored the US immigration laws and illegally opened the Mexico border. |
 |
| And thus the Obama-invited millions have been marching to US through Mexico. |
Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday arrested 284 employees at a technology repair company in a Dallas suburb on charges of working in the United States illegally. Officials say it's the largest worksite raid in the country in 10 years.
The morning raid in the Collin County city of Allen, 20 miles northeast of Dallas, came after an investigation into CVE Technology Group, which refurbishes and repairs cellphones and other consumer electronics.
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division received tips that the company mave have knowingly hired undocumented immigrants and that several workers were using fraudulent identification documents, said Katrina Berger, Special Agent in Charge in HSI's Dallas office.
Hiring irregularities found during an audit of the company's I-9 forms confirmed those tips. CVE hasn't responded to media requests for comment. Federal hiring laws require that employers have new hires fill out I-9 forms. The laws perform “necessary and common sense functions,” Berger said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“They ensure U.S. citizens and legal U.S. residents are hired for jobs in the U.S.,” Berger said. “They also ensure that illegal workers are not preyed upon or paid less than the going wage or otherwise coerced or cheated or subjected to unsafe working conditions without any means of complaint.” Businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers “create an atmosphere poised for exploiting an illegal workforce,” Berger said.
CVE employee Yessenia Ponce was inside the building when agents arrived. “Man, it was crazy,” she said. “We were working like a normal day. ... We just heard screaming, you know, people screaming and stuff. We went out and an officer just said ‘follow my voice, follow my voice.’”
In the past year, North Texas has been the site of the two largest single-site workplace raids in the U.S. in the last decade. Prior to Wednesday's raid in Allen, the largest raid took took place in the small Northeast Texas town of Sumner at a trailer manufacturer, where 159 undocumented workers were arrested. The largest workplace raid to ever take place in the U.S. was in Postville, Iowa, in 2008, where almost 400 people were arrested.
