6,000 Illegal migrants flood Yuma sector - is the return of Remain in Mexico policy to blame?

Townhall Media/Julio Rosas

The Yuma Sector in Arizona is the latest hot spot for illegal migration into the United States. Thousands have crossed the border there over the past few days overwhelming Border Patrol agents.

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Governor Doug Ducey blasted the Biden administration during a press conference on Tuesday and demanded Biden do more to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mayor of Yuma introduced the governor and while both men are speaking, you can see migrants walking through a gap in the border wall. They stop on the U.S. side of the fence, apparently waiting for instructions on what to do next.

The governor was announcing his decision to send the National Guard to Yuma to help with the flood of migrants. The likely cause, he said, was a reaction to the “piecemeal” approach the Biden administration is taking as it reinstates the Remain in Mexico policy. Biden stopped the successful Trump administration policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly called Remain in Mexico. The administration is reluctantly doing it under order from a federal judge. An appeal is underway but in the meantime, the administration is reimplementing the policy.

In the span of five days, more than 6,000 migrants made their way across the border trying to beat the policy going back into effect. Jonathan Lines, a Yuma County Supervisor calls it a tragic situation.

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“It’s a tragic situation, a humanitarian crisis. We saw a little bit of a downturn yesterday, but the numbers have climbed up today,” said Lines. “I don’t want to point a finger at anybody, but it would be nice to have federal resources here assisting.”

Lines says the area where migrants are crossing is extremely dangerous.

“It’s not a safe area,” he said. “Yesterday, after we delivered some food, the night before several of the groups we were assisting were held up at gunpoint from across the border; they crossed the border and threatened them at gunpoint, so not necessarily a safe area.”

According to Lines, Border Patrol agents are swamped and don’t have the time to come by and pick up the migrants to get them processed.

Most migrants have to wait for hours to be placed in custody.

They are traveling across the border from all over the world, not just Northern Triangle countries. The countries mentioned include Russia, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Columbia, Nepal, the Republic of Georgia, and India. They cross the border and then wait for Border Patrol agents to come and begin to process them. There are not enough agents to handle the current flood of migrants, though, and the Yuma County Sheriff’s office has been fielding 911 calls requesting water and for pick up of the border crossers. Governor Ducey will deploy National Guard troops to help.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday said he’s meeting with Border Patrol officials to craft a strategy to deal with the latest immigration crisis on the border. He said he would deploy tactical resources and National Guard troops to areas where the Border Patrol needs more help.

The resources include personnel, cars, trucks, all-terrain vehicles and a helicopter.

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Our colleague at Townhall, Julio Rosas, has been doing some excellent on-the-ground reporting from Yuma this week.

Julio noted something he had never seen before – some migrants became tired with waiting for Border Patrol to transport them away and broke off from the group to go to a nearby gas station and to a McDonald’s. Some walked into Yuma and turned themselves in

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Julio saw proof that the migrants are coming from countries outside the Northern Triangle, across the world.

The Remain in Mexico policy isn’t being reinstated all along the border at one time – that is what Governor Ducey means when he says it is a piecemeal process.

The Department of Homeland Security restarted the program in El Paso on Monday and will expand it to seven ports of entry across the southern border, including Nogales, Arizona.

Humanitarian aid organization Kino Border Initiative, in Nogales, Sonora, received word from officials that the program will start in Nogales on Monday, Dec. 13, said its spokesperson Gia Del Pino.

U.S. officials said they could not confirm when the program will start in Arizona.

What a mess. It is what we have come to expect from the Biden border crisis, though. Migrants present themselves at the border and wait to be picked up by law enforcement, sometimes local law enforcement because Border Patrol doesn’t have the resources to handle large surges. The Biden administration has not provided them with the resources they need. This is not a serious administration. Border security is not a priority so we have a humanitarian and public health crisis on the southern border. Joe Biden is callous – he simply doesn’t care about closing the border and his DHS secretary continues to gaslight Americans with happy talk that the border is closed. Clearly, it is not. States like Texas and Arizona are left to pick up the slack. They don’t have the resources that the federal government has yet this is where we are. This is Biden’s America.

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“Joe Biden’s open border policy. The border is wide open and it’s unprotected,” Ducey said.

He’s right. Biden’s is a policy of an open border. This is intentional. If he was serious about closing the border to protect Americans and maintain the rule of law, the border would be closed. The only way this will change, as the governor pointed out during the press conference, is with a change of president. Biden has more than three years left, if he makes it through his full term. That’s a lot of damage for this country to anticipate.

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