EAGLE PASS, Texas (Border Report) — The head of the Department of Homeland Security visited the South Texas border in Eagle Pass on Monday and said the migrant situation is out of control, and Congress needs to act to reform immigration laws.
After meeting with U.S. Border Patrol agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers here on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told media: “These agents and officers encountered an historic number of migrants in December including large numbers of migrants who arrived at the border at one time putting tremendous stress on our broken immigration system.”
“Our immigration system is outdated and broken and in need of reform for decades,” he said.
Mayorkas’ visit comes days after over 60 Republican lawmakers last week visited Eagle Pass and declared abject chaos on the Southwest border, especially here.
But Mayorkas and others noted a significant drop in migrants crossing here from Piedras Negras, Mexico, in the past few days, and he credits Mexico with stepping up its enforcement actions.
“We are grateful for Mexico’s renewed enforcement commitments to address the movement of people north,” Mayorkas said.
Mayorkas said after recent talks between President Biden and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and after a U.S. delegation traveled to Mexico City to meet officials there, that Mexico has resumed enforcement activities. He says Mexico is guarding its southern border, deporting migrants, and staffing its checkpoints on migratory routes throughout the country.
U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican who represents Eagle Pass, last week told NewsNation that illegal crossings dropped from over 4,500 per day to about 400 per day last week.
From the windy, dusty banks of the Rio Grande, Border Report watched from across the river as Mexican soldiers yelled “alto,” or stop, to migrants and marched them away from the river and inland on Monday.
A field near International Bridge 2 where thousands had been processed was empty on Monday yet still littered with police tape and emergency fencing and cones.
Only a few asylum seekers were seen apprehended Monday by border authorities here, a far difference from the mass arrests that occurred here over the holidays.
Amerika Garcia Grewal, a volunteer from Eagle Pass and founder of the Eagle Pass Border Vigil, says during two trips to Piedras Negras last week taking donations to deported migrant youth, she saw heightened Mexican law enforcement.
“We immediately had police come up to us asking who we are what we were doing, those things of sort. The side roads that go down the river had armored vehicles and law enforcement officials with weapons and carbines and they’re barring any access to the river itself,” she told Border Report.
Over 300,000 migrants have so far this fiscal year already been encountered on the Southwest border — which is nearly one-third of all who crossed in Fiscal 2023.
Mayorkas said the United States must lean on its allies to stem the flow of migrants north. He said he is traveling to Central America in upcoming weeks to meet with officials to try to stop migrants from leaving their homelands.
He says recently he spoke with officials in Panama, and the United States has stepped up its deportation flights to Venezuela to try to deter asylum seekers from coming to the border.
In the United States, he says more Border Patrol agents and CBP officers are needed, as well as immigration judges and asylum caseworkers, and technology for law enforcement to patrol the border.
Here in Eagle Pass, for several weeks Bridge 1 was closed due to a surge of migrants crossing from Piedras Negras and in order for CBP officers to help Border Patrol agents with processing the asylum seekers.
Garcia Grewal says Christmas shopping was a bust for shops here and many families could not cross to visit with loved ones over the holidays. She says it will take several months, if not years, for the local economy to recover.
She also doesn’t welcome all of the politicians and lawmakers using her hometown as what she calls “political theatre.”
“We’re tired of being the stage for their show and tell and we’d like to see some real change,” she said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@borderReport.com.