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Top Border Patrol officials said officers are “overwhelmed” by the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border, a spiraling “crisis” that intensified this week when a gun battle between rival cartel gangs broke out in a Texas town.
“A week ago I would not have called this a crisis. Today it meets the definition. We are overwhelmed,” Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News Wednesday night.
“We do not have the resources to stop the cartels from bringing in illegal aliens, from bringing in drugs, therefore we are in fact in a crisis,” he added.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden said he did not have any plans to travel to the southern border “at the moment” amid a surge in migrants.
Instead, Biden issued a blunt message to migrants thinking about crossing the border, saying “Don’t come over” when asked by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.
“Don’t leave your town or city or community,” he added.
A senior CBP official told Fox the situation is untenable.
“The president understands it is a crisis which is why he told migrants ‘don’t come over,’” the official told the network on condition of anonymity.
In undoing former President Donald Trump’s border initiatives, Biden unleashed a flood of illegal migrants at the border, including thousands of unescorted children.
In his first month in office, he ended construction of Trump’s signature border wall and began to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy under which about 71,000 Central American asylum applicants were awaiting rulings in Mexico.
More than 4,000 migrant children were being held by the Border Patrol as of Sunday, with at least 3,000 of them staying in custody longer than the 72-hour limit set by a court order, a US official told the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the border situation as “difficult,” but stopped short of calling it a crisis, according to Fox News.
“The situation at the southwest border is difficult,” Mayorkas said. “We are working around the clock to manage it and we will continue to do so. That is our job. We are making progress and we are executing on our plan. It will take time and we will not waver in our commitment to succeed.”
The CBP officials made their comments as the news outlet reported that a gunfight had erupted near Roma, a Texas community between two rivaling cartels.
Jaeson Jones, a former captain in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s intelligence and counter-terror division, said “it’s time” for the federal government to focus more on the mountuing cartel violence.
Jones told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that he regularly witnesses gun battles in the Mexican city of Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande from Roma, Fox News reported.
“That community has been in battle between two cartels for the last two years: Cartel del Golfo — The Gulf Cartel — and Cartel del Noreste — known as Los Zetas by many people,” Jones said.
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