Border Patrol official: Caravan-size influx of migrants arriving every week in Rio Grande Valley

A caravan-size influx of migrants is flooding across the border each week in just a single sector, a top Border Patrol official told lawmakers Tuesday — the latest indicator of the growing migration crisis on the southern border.

“Much media attention has focused on caravans coming across from Central America,” Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. “But the fact is that RGV is receiving caravan-equivalent numbers every seven days.”

Karisch said his sector has apprehended people from 50 different countries, including China, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt and Romania.

“People are traveling across hemispheres to attempt to illegally enter the U.S., using the same pathways as the Central Americans,” he said.

Karisch noted that Border Patrol has apprehended more families illegally crossing the border in the first five months of fiscal 2019 than during all of fiscal 2018. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended more than 76,000 migrants across the border in February and said it was on track to apprehend more than 100,000 in March.

In the Rio Grande Valley alone, Karisch said that at current pace, they would have more than 260,000 apprehensions in his sector by the end of fiscal 2019. There were 162,000 in RGV last year. He also said that his agents apprehend, on average, 1,000 people a day.

Read the rest of the story HERE.