(NewsNation) — Eight migrants were found and arrested for criminal trespassing by an elite Brush Team of the Texas Department of Public Safety while NewsNation was on a ride-along with the team.
The migrants were discovered hiding in shoulder-tall brush on a private ranch while NewsNation’s Ali Bradley witnessed how DPS operates from the backseat.
The human side
One of the migrants, a 21-year-old man from Honduras, said he has family in North Carolina. He said he tried to enter the U.S. by the legal route but believed this was their only option after a month of failure.
But now, these migrants face state charges for criminal trespass, ruining their hopes for asylum.
Migrants are struggling to enter the U.S. legally as ports of entry all along the border have been overwhelmed with thousands of migrants hoping to gain asylum in the U.S.
Last month, a migrant from Guinea told NewsNation that while the U.S. immigration process was scary, he was facing political persecution back home.
“I’m not scared, because, you know, here is the only way I think I can be okay,” he told NewsNation. “If God made for me to be in America today, I’m here. I know America can rescue me,” Mahmoud, the Guinean migrant, said.
Challenges of legal entry
Like the migrants from Honduras, crossing into the U.S. legally is not always an option.
NewsNation’s Ali Bradley spoke to a 20-year-old migrant from Morocco. Osama, who goes by OS, crossed into the U.S. illegally. He said he paid $7,000 to cross into the country because he had “no idea how to get a visa.”
Currently, hundreds of Chinese migrants are living in makeshift camps at the border, awaiting processing. They expressed a desire to escape the Chinese Communist government, seeking asylum in the U.S.
Earlier this year, the federal government had as many as 10,000 unaccompanied children in custody.
“Most of these children, at least in my experience, the case I investigated… the child was given up by the parent voluntarily,” said former Homeland Security investigator Victor Avila. “A lot of people think, well the cartel stole them from the parents… does that happen? Of course. But it’s rare,” he said.
Operation Lone Star
Lt. Chris Olivarez of the Texas DPS Brush Team says Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s “Operation Lone Star” is critical in easing the overcrowded and overwhelmed federal immigration effort.
“The difference to the work we’re doing here on these ranches are these are individuals that are evading capture they are trying to go undetected and in that case, they get picked up by human smugglers,” Olivarez said “We’re trying to prevent that.”
“It’s important because now if we’re not actually making these arrests and turning them over to Border Patrol, it’s an ongoing cycle now where they get deported back and then they’re back doing it again the same day. So now we can put a stop to that by having some kind of deterrence,” Olivarez said.
Operation Lonestar has expanded several times over the last two years to accommodate the increasing number of people trying to evade law enforcement. However, Abbot has not signed a bill allowing local law enforcement to arrest people who cross into the country outside an official port of entry.
In 2022, more than 600,000 known “gotaways” were recorded, according to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This marks over 1.7 million gotaways under the Biden administration.
“We’ve had 10,000 arrests right now. You gotta keep in mind that if we don’t have the state resources patrolling these rural ranches then these are potential gotaways. You know that’s always a concern. A public safety and national security concern,” Olivarez said.