Arrests for irregular crosses in the Valle de Río Grande fall in Texas

A border patrol bus remained empty this week, waiting for any migrant that was delivered near the southern end of Texas.

Agents in two rapid boats quickly passed through areas of sandy beaches, well -known landing points for people entering the United States illegally from Mexico sustaining themselves in inflatable tires, but they did not see anything suspicious.

Those who used to be very busy sites to disembark near the border city of Mission were deserted from migrants who previously crossed there, although the riverbank was full of clothes, plastic bracelets distributed by smugglers and a teddy bear in a morning of unusually cold Thursday.

The arrests for irregular crosses have fallen dramatically from a monthly record of 250,000 in December 2023, perhaps more notably in the Rio Grande Valley, the epicenter of the arrivals of migrants from 2013 to 2022.

Journalists from The Associated Press who accompanied Border Patrol agents on Thursday in a truck and fast boats – which traveled 48 kilometers along the Rio Grande Valley and the river for five hours – did not find any migrant.

The arrests, which were already at their lowest levels since 2019 when President Donald Trump took office on January 20, have fallen dramatically in recent weeks. The head of the Border Patrol, Michael Banks, said on Friday that they are currently about 350 a day, compared to more than 1,500 daily in December, the last month of which data has been published.

The border patrol agents in Rio Grande Valley, where approximately 1.4 million people live, have been making about 50 arrests per day, compared to a daily average of 325 in December and almost 3,000 in the days of greatest transit of 2021.

Despite the relative calm, Trump declared a national emergency on the border on his first day in office.

In a memorandum on immigration policy by assuming the position last week, the Secretary of Justice Pam Bondi wrote: “illegal border crossings and irregular migration to the United States have reached record levels, resulting in a substantial and unacceptable threat to our National Security and Public Security ”.

On Thursday night there were arrests along the Bravo River – which the United States calls Rio Grande – as well as a shooting on Wednesday. The Border Patrol reported that an agent shot someone in an alleged smuggling incident in the town of Boca Chica, hurting a suspect.

However, no migrants were found along the river on Thursday morning in former highly traveled points such as Mission, a city of 87,000 inhabitants where, even last December, asylum applicants waited in open fields near a very very international bridge traveled for agents to pick them up, or in many other points along the winding river bordered by giant reeds.

The increase in surveillance by Mexican authorities within their own borders and severe asylum restrictions in the United States contributed to the drastic falls at the irregular crosses before Trump assumed the position.

In recent years, the Texas National Guard and the State Police have become an important presence under the «solitary star operation» of Governor Greg Abbott, a border initiative to control immigration at a cost of several billions of dollars .

The Office of Customs and Border Protection recently agreed to allow Texas National Guard to arrest and arrest people for irregular crosses, which had previously been of the exclusive domain of the federal government.

On Thursday it was authorized that 300 members of the Texas Guard make migratory arrests in conjunction with the border patrol agents and deployed even more along the border.