EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — U.S. Border Patrol agents and Texas troopers disrupted a migrant smuggling scheme and detained 24 individuals, El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony “Scott” Good tweeted Monday evening.
Good said members of the Border Patrol’s Santa Teresa Station Anti-Smuggling Unit with a Special Operations Detachment and the Texas Department of Public Safety teamed up to thwart the smuggling scheme.
Photos Good posted on X show numerous migrants stuffed inside an SUV and packed in the bed of a pickup covered by a tarp.
Good said, “Teamwork (with) our law enforcement partners is key.”
Agents in the El Paso Sector had been encountering over a thousand migrants a day at the end of last year, and the number of people in CBP custody was well over 4,000 throughout December, according to the City of El Paso’s “Migrant Dashboards.” The number of migrant encounters and those in CBP custody in El Paso are at about half of those in December during the first four weeks of January. On Tuesday, the city’s dashboard item for “Daily CBP encounters” and “Daily CBP in Custody” said, “blank.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s monthly operational statistics for the month of December have not been released.