Over 500 Migrants Surge US Border at El Paso After Being Fed Misinformation, Looking for Buses to Canada; Migrants Turn Back to Mexico After Buses-to-Canada Rumor Debunked

Over 500 migrants surge US border at El Paso after being fed misinformation, looking for buses to Canada:

At least 500 migrants attempted to illegally cross into the US at border hot spot El Paso Wednesday — wrongly believing they could get free passage to Canada or laws had changed allowing them to seek asylum on American soil.

US Border Patrol agents in El Paso said they encountered the surge of migrants between 8:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. around one of the main border gates into the country.

Photos and video from the area show hundreds of hopeful asylum seekers from central and south America lined up at the border fence, a scene not seen in 2023 after the government expanded the number of countries whose citizens are expelled under Title 42.

Border agents said most of the migrants were from Venezuela, and many told them they had been told US border policies had changed and they would be allowed to stay in America if they crossed the border – rumors likely spread through social media.

Sources told The Post other migrants had heard about New York City funding free bus tickets to migrants who want to pursue asylum claims in Canada and wrongly believed they would be sent there if they crossed the border.

However, border agents informed the migrants no policies have changed and under measure Title 42, the US is still expelling illegal border crossers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti back to Mexico.

In a statement issued Thursday, Border Patrol said: “The El Paso Sector would like to inform migrants that nothing has changed. The US Border Patrol in the El Paso Sector continues to expel migrants under CDC’s Title 42 authority.” —>READ MORE HERE

Migrants turn back to Mexico after buses-to-Canada rumor debunked

Mauricio Mata braved near-freezing temperatures and ventured to the border wall on the other side of the Rio Grande on Wednesday night under the impression U.S. authorities would be busing him and other Venezuelan asylum-seekers to the Canadian border.

But after several hours of standing in a crowd of more than 500 people, Mata realized it was all a lie.

“We were certain it was true and that we would be given priority to go to Canada. But immigration (officers) told us that if we surrendered to them, they would send us back,” Mata said Thursday in a park within walking distance of the river in Juarez, Mexico. “I turned back because I don’t want to start over after all I suffered in coming here.”

The U.S. Border Patrol reported the mass surrender of 500 people at the border wall in El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday night. Perhaps 200 more trickled across on Thursday morning with specific instructions to approach border agents at access Gate 36 and Gate 40. Most of the migrants were single adult males and females, but there were several families as well.

“At around 8 p.m., agents assigned to the Ysleta station started receiving a constant flow of migrants. In a period of a couple of hours, it was a flow of 500 migrants,” said Orlando Marrero-Rubio, a spokesman for the Border Patrol. “They were instructed that the federal government changed its policies on immigration and that’s completely false. […] Somebody on the Mexican side is informing them that we are going to put them in buses to Canada. That’s false.”

Federal officials suspect the rumor of free bus trips to Canada is being spread by the same transnational criminal organizations that lured the migrants to the border in the first place. —>READ MORE HERE

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