Agents with US Customs and Border Protection, working with immigration officials from Mexico, have discovered thousands of non-Hispanic undocumented immigrants trying to cross the southern border of Mexico to try to get to Texas. The immigrants enter nations as far to the south as Brazil and then head for the US, often with fraudulent travel documents.
This week, Reuters were told by a US Customs and Border Protection official that most of the extra-continental, undocumented immigrants encountered by Mexico on the southern border eventually end up on the border with the US. The federal government has remained reticent on the issue of ‘special interest aliens’ apprehended in Texas as well as some other border states.
Reuters has also obtained new information that 6342 such undocumented immigrants were caught at the border in 2016. This is a significant increase on the figure of 4261 recorded last year, and in 2014 the number was just 1831. In 2014, a leaked document from a CBP official revealed that the US was apprehending a large number of undocumented immigrants from China, Egypt, North Africa, Yemen and a variety of other countries in the Middle East.
In Mexico, the problem has become so acute that officials have opened a detention center in Tapachula, close to the southern border between Mexico and Guatemala. Tapachula is on a permeable border, which is appealing to those attempting to move illegally between countries.