Biden admin erects tent city in Texas to handle influx of illegal immigrants

ICE Books Hotel Rooms for Six Months to House Migrant Families at Border
Zachary Evans
Sat, March 20, 2021, 11:02 AM·

The Biden administration has entered an $86 million contract to house members of migrant families in hotel rooms at the U.S.-Mexico border, Axios reported on Saturday.

The contract was awarded to Texas non-profit Endeavors for a period of six months, although it may be extended if the immigration crisis continues. The terms will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to find hotels near the southern border to hold up to 1,200 migrant family members, officials at the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Axios.

ICE holds custody over migrant families and adults who enter the U.S. illegally and are allowed to remain following processing by Border Patrol agents. Almost 19,000 migrant family members made the crossing in February, up from 7,000 in January, according to the agency’s most recent data.

Around 13,000 family members have been allowed to remain in the U.S. since the beginning of January. Meanwhile, 42 percent of migrant families were expelled directly to Mexico in February, down from 64 percent in January.

Unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally are required to be transferred to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Biden administration has refused to expel migrant children. A record number of over 4,500 migrant children are currently detained at Border Patrol facilities due to a backlog in processing, while an additional 9,500 are housed by HHS.

The Biden administration is struggling to contend with the influx of migrants at the border, with DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas predicting the current surge will break a 20-year record of illegal crossings. Earlier this month, Mayorkas ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to work in conjunction with HHS to provide shelter for migrant children.

Following an influx of over 2,000 migrants into a region of South Texas through Thursday night and Friday morning, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials reportedly requested planes to fly some of the migrants to states on the Canadian border for processing.

Photos of migrant detention highlight Biden’s border secrecy
By Associated Press
Published: Mar. 23, 2021 at 8:36 AM MDT|Updated: 20 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration has tried for weeks to keep the public from seeing images like those released Monday of immigrant children in U.S. custody at the border sleeping on mats under foil blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions.

Administration officials have steadfastly refused to call the detention of more than 15,000 children in U.S. custody, or the conditions they’re living under, a crisis. But they have stymied most efforts by outsiders to decide for themselves.

Officials barred nonprofit lawyers who conduct oversight from entering a Border Patrol tent where thousands of children and teenagers are detained. And federal agencies have refused or ignored dozens of requests from the media for access to detention sites. Such access was granted several times by the administration of President Donald Trump, whose restrictive immigration approach Biden vowed to reverse.

The new president faces growing criticism for the apparent secrecy at the border, including from fellow Democrats.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Monday “the administration has a commitment to transparency to make sure that the news media gets the chance to report on every aspect of what’s happening at the border.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki added that the White House was working with homeland security officials and the Health and Human Services Department to “finalize details” and that she hoped to have an update in the “coming days.”


This March 20, 2021, photo provided by the Office of Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, shows detainees in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporary overflow facility in Donna, Texas. President Joe Biden's administration faces mounting criticism for refusing to allow outside observers into facilities where it is detaining thousands of immigrant children.(Photo courtesy of the Office of Rep. Henry Cuellar via AP)

Axios on Monday first published a series of photos taken inside the largest Border Patrol detention center, a sprawling tent facility in the South Texas city of Donna. The photos were released by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat from the border city of Laredo.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, released its own set of photos and videos on Tuesday from the facilities in Donna and El Paso, Texas. The photos from Donna show some of the same detention areas as in the images released by Cuellar. The agency says it’s “working to balance the need for public transparency and accountability” while still refusing access to most outside visitors.

Cuellar said he released the photos in part because the administration has refused media access to the Donna tent. He said he also wanted to draw attention to the extreme challenges that border agents face in watching so many children, sometimes for a week or longer despite the Border Patrol’s three-day limit on detaining minors.

“We ought to take care of those kids like they’re our own kids,” Cuellar said.

Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the U.S. should allow media access to border facilities while respecting the privacy of immigrants detained inside. He noted the risk of sharing without permission images of children who have already faced trauma.

“We ought to be aware of these conditions,” Saenz said. “People have to see them so that they can assess the inhumanity and hopefully embark on more humane policies.”

The White House has prided itself on its methodical rollout of policy during its first 50-plus days but West Wing aides privately acknowledge they were caught off guard by the surge of migrants at the border and the resulting media furor.

Republican lawmakers largely sat out the debate over administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. While none of them voted for the package, their opposition was muted and they instead focused on culture war issues, like the debate over racial stereotypes in some Dr. Seuss books, rather than a bill that was broadly popular with GOP voters.

But the GOP has grabbed on to the border situation with both hands, reviving the issue that was key to propelling Trump to the top of the Republican field in 2016. In 2018, the Trump administration detained hundreds of children in many of the same facilities being used now after separating them from their parents. The following year, hundreds of families and children detained at one West Texas border station went days without adequate food, water or soap.

Biden has kept in place a Trump-era public health order and expelled thousands of immigrant adults and families, but he declined to expel immigrant children without a parent after a federal appeals court in January cleared the way for him to do so. He also moved to speed up the reunification of hundreds of separated immigrant families.

“What Trump did was horrible,” Cuellar said. “These pictures show you that even under our best intentions, and the Biden administration has the best intentions, it’s still very difficult.”

Cuellar said the White House needs to work more with Mexico and Central America to prevent people from leaving their home countries. The White House said Monday that key officials would go this week to Mexico and Guatemala.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who visited a facility in El Paso, Texas, last week, told NPR, “We want to make sure that the press has access to hold the administration accountable.”

The Associated Press has requested access to border facilities for more than a month. Reporters first asked Health and Human Services on Feb. 4 to allow entry into a surge facility re-opened at Carrizo Springs, Texas, holding hundreds of teenagers. And they have asked Homeland Security officials for access at least seven times to Border Patrol facilities, with no response. The AP has also petitioned Psaki to open border facilities.

Border agencies under Trump allowed limited media tours of both Homeland Security and Health and Human Services facilities. Several of those visits revealed troubling conditions inside, including the detention of large numbers of children as young as 5 separated from their parents.

Under Biden, the agencies also have denied full access to nonprofit lawyers who conduct oversight of facilities where children are detained. Those oversight visits occur under a federal court settlement.

When lawyers this month visited the Border Patrol facility at Donna, where thousands of children are now detained, agents refused to let them inside and the Justice Department said they were not entitled to gain access. The lawyers were forced to interview children outside. The Justice Department declined to comment.

The newly published photos released by Cuellar’s office show groups of children crowded together inside the partitions. Some appear to be watching television while others are lying on floor mats, some side by side. Children are shown wearing surgical masks but are close to each other.

The Donna facility consists of large interconnected tents. Overhead photos taken by AP show enclosed outdoor areas where children can go. But lawyers who have interviewed children detained at Donna say some can go days without being allowed outside.

The administration is rushing to open more space to get roughly 5,000 children out of Border Patrol detention and into Health and Human Services facilities that are better suited for youth. It has also tried to expedite the releases of children in HHS custody to parents and other sponsors in the U.S. But border agents continue to apprehend far more children daily than HHS is releasing, even though more than 40% of youths in the system have a parent or legal guardian who could take them.

Meanwhile, the administration is seeing its emergency facilities for immigrant children approach capacity almost as quickly as it can open them. The downtown Dallas convention center has 1,500 teenagers less than a week after opening and is expected to take in 500 more teens Monday, according to HHS. Its current capacity is 2,300 people.

Hundreds of Migrant Children Test Positive for Coronavirus Upon Arrival at HHS Facilities
Zachary Evans, National Review
Wed, March 24, 2021, 1:32 PM

Around 2,900 migrant children detained by U.S. Border Patrol over the past year tested positive for coronavirus, including 300 currently in custody of U.S. agencies.

There are currently over 11,500 unaccompanied minors in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to government data obtained by Axios. The 300 positive cases make up less than 3 percent of all migrant children in HHS custody, and are reportedly in medical isolation in HHS facilities.

“The positivity rate in general is what was anticipated, and planning has resulted in robust response,” HHS spokesman Mark Weber told Axios on Wednesday.

The influx of migrant children crossing the southern border has caused a backlog in HHS, which is charged with finding shelter for the children while their asylum claims are processed. Border Patrol agents are charged with finding HHS shelters for unaccompanied minors following their detention, however because of the backlog many children have remained in border patrol facilities longer than the 72-hour legal limit.

The Biden administration has forbid media outlets from visiting or receiving photographs from inside Border Patrol facilities, however Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) provided Axios with images from one such facility showing overcrowded conditions.

“We have to stop kids and families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to come to the United States,” Cuellar said. “We have to work with Mexico and Central American countries to have them apply for asylum in their countries.”

The 11,500 migrant children currently HHS custody is higher than the number of children detained in May 2019, when a major uptick in illegal crossings overwhelmed border agencies.

Biden tasks Harris with tackling migrant influx on US-Mexico border
BBC, Published 1 hour ago

US President Joe Biden has put Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of controlling migration at the southern border following a big influx of new arrivals.

Mr Biden said he was giving her a "tough job" but that she was "the most qualified person to do it".

The numbers of people arriving have grown since Mr Biden took office.

They include hundreds of unaccompanied minors who are being held in immigration detention facilities.

Mr Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, was widely criticised over his government's treatment of young migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Since January, the Biden administration has reversed a policy of turning away unaccompanied children, instead choosing to process them and place them with sponsoring families in the US.

But Mr Biden's critics say his policies have led to a surge in illegal migration.

In February, US Customs officials took more than 100,000 people into custody along the southern border, a 28% increase on the previous month.

Announcing Ms Harris's appointment as his immigration czar, Mr Biden told reporters and officials at the White House: "She's the most qualified person to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle [Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador], and the countries that are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks - stemming the migration to our southern border".

Mr Biden said Ms Harris's past work as California's attorney general made her well suited to leading the effort, adding: "When she speaks, she speaks for me."

In response Ms Harris said: "Needless to say, the work will not be easy. But it is important work."

President Biden said he was giving his second-in-command "a tough job"

In an interview with CBS on Wednesday, Ms Harris said there was a need "to deal with the root causes... of what's happening in the Northern Triangle".

"Dealing with what we need to do around aid in a way that is about developing those countries so that we also deal with the cause of why people are coming into our country," she said.

Analysis box by Anthony Zurcher, North America reporter:

A portfolio laced with political opportunity - and peril.

For the first two months of the Biden administration, Vice-President Kamala Harris had the look of a presidential understudy, accompanying her boss to major events but never stepping into the spotlight on her own.

That just changed.

By putting her in charge of addressing the growing humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border, Biden has given Harris a significant portfolio laced with both political opportunity and peril. Her challenge is to prove that there is way to stem the tide of undocumented migrants coming to the US from Central America without resorting to what Democrats characterise as the Trump administration's draconian policies.

If she succeeds, Harris defuses an issue that the Republican Party - and Donald Trump, in particular - has used as an effective political weapon against her party, earning the gratitude of influential immigration activists. If she fails, the ensuing political fallout could derail the Biden presidency and overshadow all its early accomplishments.

Biden boasted that Harris, as a former California attorney general, is the person "most qualified" to handle the complex political, logistical and diplomatic challenges this immigration issue presents.

Harris now has the chance to prove it - and burnish any future presidential credentials along the way.

Blow the Whistle on Biden’s Border Lies
Rich Lowry
Fri, March 26, 2021, 7:08 AM·3 min read

Politics isn’t a particularly honest business, but still, the mendacity about the border crisis is off the charts.

It’s been astonishing — and maddening — to watch Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas say the Trump policy was to turn away kids and abandon them in the desert.

There is no way that he doesn’t know that this is false, and indeed when called on it by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday last weekend, he didn’t push back.

Yet, President Biden repeated the same line at his press conference Thursday, and took it to another level by saying that kids were left to starve in the desert.

Starve in the desert! What kind of monsters does he think U.S. Border Patrol agents are?

If you’ve been reading NR, you know not only that this is wrong, but specifically how and why it’s wrong.

Of course, we are still all over the ongoing illiberal frenzy in this country, and if you doubt it, check out this excellent report by my colleague Ryan Mills, “Lincoln Project Smears Georgia Lawmaker as Racist, Whips Up Social-Media Mob to Get Him Fired.”

But the border is top of mind for me right now.

We warned right after the election, “Joe Biden shouldn’t want to begin his administration with a renewed migrant crisis at the border, but that’s what his priorities risk creating.”

We’ve excoriated the Biden team for denying that the crisis is a crisis.

And to get on the record, in extensive detail, what worked at the border in the Trump administration and why it’s foolish to throw it away, I wrote this more-than-5,000-word report.

Someone should have written this kind of piece long ago, but one thing I’ve learned being in this business for some time now is that the most unreported story is the story of a GOP success.

This was an important one, and it’s not only being ignored, it’s being lied about.

No, the Trump administration didn’t send kids into the desert — it returned them to their home countries.

No, it didn’t dismantle our immigration system — it found an approach at the border that worked.

No, it didn’t irresponsibly close shelters at the border — it shut down surge facilities when they were no longer needed, and under intense political pressure from the Democrats.

The reflex to ignore and distort reality on this issue is incredibly strong, and we’ve called it out, over and over.

This kind of content — unsparing, well-informed, and utterly reliable — is, I submit, why National Review is so important.

We care enough to really dig in on fraught issues like this and to get it right.

I can’t tell you how inspiring that is, and how grateful we are. But we are hoping to get a last kick here to make our goal.

It will support, among other things, what we’ve been doing over the last couple of months — and will keep doing — to blow the whistle on the Biden team’s border lies.

Biden Official Asked GOP Senators to Delete Photos of Border Facilities, Senator Says
Brittany Bernstein
Sun, March 28, 2021, 7:40 AM

Senator Mike Braun (R., Ind.) on Saturday said a Biden official asked a group of Republican senators who visited the southern border to delete photos they had taken of the overcrowded conditions at a migrant processing and holding center they toured one day earlier in Donna, Texas.

“There was one of Biden’s representatives. I felt sorry for the lady because she actually talked to me about deleting a picture, but by the time she got to me, all those other pictures were taken, and that shows you the hypocrisy,” Braun told the Washington Examiner.

“None of us would have gone down there if we were going to be muzzled,” Braun said, adding that Border Patrol instructed them not to take photos, though “they were telling us that because they had to.”

Braun visited the facility, which is at 700 percent capacity, with a group of 18 other Republican lawmakers. Photos reveal children sleeping on the ground on mats and migrants crowded into enclosed pods.

The Indiana Republican told the paper that the group ran into so-called “coyotes,” who guide migrants across the border for money, during a stop at the edge of the Rio Grande with border agents.

“All of a sudden to hear from the other side of the river taunting from the smugglers and coyotes, most of it in Spanish, telling the border guards that whatever you do, we’re coming,” Braun said. “That kind of hit home in such an anecdotal way because it is one story that kind of is a metaphor for what’s happening all up and down the border.

After the visit, Braun wrote a letter to the president urging him to visit the border himself.

“The crisis surrounding this surge makes it a moral imperative for you to see firsthand what is happening—and not the sanitized version of the border tour taken by some of my congressional colleagues,” Braun wrote. “Having personally gone this week, I can testify to this being an inhumane, unsustainable and dangerous situation.

The lawmakers’ visit comes amid a worsening crisis at the border as officials struggle to keep up with an influx of migrants — especially unaccompanied minors — at the border.

As of Thursday, there were more than 18,000 unaccompanied minors in Border Protection and Health and Human Services custody. The increase has caused delays at processing centers that are required, by law, to transfer children to HHS shelters in under 72 hours.

Migrant families freed without court notice or any paperwork
ELLIOT SPAGAT
Wed, March 31, 2021, 11:05 PM

MISSION, Texas (AP) — Overwhelmed and underprepared, U.S. authorities are releasing migrant families on the Mexican border without notices to appear in immigration court or sometimes without any paperwork at all — a time-saving move that has left migrants confused.

The rapid releases ease pressure on the Border Patrol and its badly overcrowded holding facilities but shifts work to Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, the agency that enforces immigration laws within the United States. Families are released with booking records — when they get paperwork at all — though only parents are photographed and fingerprinted.

The Border Patrol began the unusual practice last week in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, which has seen the biggest increase in the number of migrant families and unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Last week, the agency added instructions to report to an ICE office within 60 days to adults’ booking documents.

But some got no documents at all, including dozens at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the Texas border city of Mission, where about 100 migrants released by U.S. authorities had been arriving each night to sleep on mats in classrooms in a shuttered elementary school.

Carlos Enrique Linga, 27, waited at the shelter for a week without documents along with his 5-year-old daughter, hoping to join a friend in Tennessee. His wife is still in Guatemala with their 2-year-old twin daughters and a 3-month-old.

Linga was unwilling to leave the shelter until he got documents and was asking Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley for help.

“We hope they can help with our papers so that we can move on, work and send (money) to my family,” said Linga, whose home in Guatemala was destroyed by storms in November. “The church has told us that there are mistakes sometimes. Because there are so many people, they forget.”

Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, said it stopped issuing court notices in some cases because preparing even one of the documents often takes hours. Migrants undergo background checks and are tested for COVID-19.

The agency didn't answer questions about how many migrants have been released without court notices or without documents at all.

Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley, knows of 10 to 15 families released without any paperwork since last week, an issue that has cropped up before when there are large increases in new arrivals.

“It’s a problem, it’s a situation we need to resolve, to make sure we follow up,” she said.

Migrants will be issued notices to appear in court at their 60-day check-ins with ICE, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been made public. It is unclear how widespread the practice has been, but it is very common in Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

Preparing a court appearance notice can take an hour to 90 minutes, said Chris Cabrera, spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, a union that represents agents. He welcomed the change.

“Honestly, from my end, I think it's good because it's less paperwork for our guys,” said Cabrera, who works in the Rio Grande Valley.

An uptick in the number of people crossing the border, especially children traveling alone and families, has filled up federal holding facilities. The U.S. has been releasing families with children 6 and under and expelling families with older children under pandemic-related powers that deny an opportunity to seek asylum.

Immigration attorneys had mixed reactions to people being released without court notices or paperwork, particularly the requirement to check in with ICE. They advise migrants to apply for a different route to asylum — one that's only for people already in the country. In that option, they meet a Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officer in a less adversarial environment and if denied, can appeal to an immigration judge, advocates say.

“It’s a whole different tone,” said Charlene D’Cruz, director of Lawyers for Good Government’s Project Corazon legal aid program. And if they fail, they get “a second bite at the apple” before a judge.

Initially, U.S. authorities didn't even require the ICE check-in when it began releasing families without court notices over the past two weeks. But they shifted course. D'Cruz said ICE could potentially issue a notice to appear in court, expel people from the country or do nothing.

“There are so many different options, and I don’t know what's going to happen,” D'Cruz said.

The immigration courts, with a backlog of 1.3 million cases, is ill-prepared for a large increase in new asylum claims.

At the shelter in Mission, a city of about 85,000 people bordering Mexico with a large park known for birdlife, migrants who have booking records closely guarded them. Along with their proof of a COVID-19 test, the documents are kept in large yellow envelopes that say, “Please help me. I do not speak English.”

Information on the booking form is sparse: name, nationality, gender, date of birth. Some forms say they are eligible for “prosecutorial discretion,” a designation that signals they are not a priority for deportation.

Jose Sansario waited at the shelter for a week after coming from Guatemala with his wife, Kimberly, and their 3-year-old daughter, Genesee. They had difficulty finding flights to Richmond, Virginia, their final destination.

They left their homeland in early March because a gang threatened to kill him if he didn't hand over money from his auto repair business. He said he heard the Biden administration was friendly to immigrants, despite repeated statements from the president and top aides that the border is not open.

“We didn't know what was true, but we had faith — faith that God would help us and that faith would allow us in,” Sansario said.

Alba Urquia of El Salvador waited for a week at the shelter because she was released without any documents after crossing the Rio Grande with a large group of migrants, including her 4-year-old daughter. She plans to help her father with his car repair shop in Los Angeles.

“I can't leave,” she said, sitting on a bench in the shuttered school's playground. The shelter has since closed. “Our fear is that they return us to Mexico or to our country.”

“That would be a nightmare,” said Alexi Sarmiento of Honduras, who came to the U.S. with her 6- and 9-year-old daughters and was released without documents.

More than a million migrants expected at U.S.-Mexico border this year - U.S. official
By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. border official said on Tuesday he expects more than a million migrants will arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border this year, a sign of a growing humanitarian challenge for President Joe Biden on the southwest border.

If the figures reach 1 million, it could mirror a similar increase in border crossings in 2019 during Donald Trump’s presidency, when nearly 978,000 migrants were taken into custody.

Border Patrol arrested about 100,000 migrants in February, the most in a month since mid-2019. More migrants typically cross between April and June, Raul Ortiz, deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, told reporters.

“We’re already starting to see some higher days of 6,000-plus apprehensions,” Ortiz said. “So I fully expect our border patrol agents to encounter over a million people this year.”

The Biden administration allowed several reporters to interview border officials and tour a crowded migrant processing facility in Donna, Texas, on Tuesday following growing demands from news outlets for more access. The footage was shared with Reuters and other outlets.

The Donna facility is holding 4,100 migrants, most of whom are unaccompanied minors, according to a pool report, four times its pre-COVID capacity.

More than 2,000 unaccompanied migrant children have been held there for longer than a legal limit of 72 hours, Border Patrol official Oscar Escamilla said. Of those, 39 children had been stuck in the tent facility for more than 15 days as they await placement in a shelter overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s out of my hands,” he told reporters. “For whatever reason, they have fallen through the system or through the cracks.”

The HHS refugee office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants have trekked to the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months. The increase is driven by poor economic conditions in the region, the effects of devastating hurricanes last year, and hope among migrants that they will be allowed to remain in the United States as Biden reverses some of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a written statement that federal officials were “working around the clock” to quickly move children out of the packed border facilities.

During the tour of the Donna facility, reporters visited an area for young children, who sat inside a playpen, used coloring books and watched a movie.

The children, as young as 3 years old, also sleep in the area, Escamilla said, since other areas for unaccompanied children were too crowded.

Escamilla said one young girl told him she did not know the U.S. state to which she was traveling, just that “it snows there.” He said another girl had lost the phone number of a contact in the United States.

In video footage from inside the facility, children were crowded into plastic-walled “pods,” laying on floor mats and covered with Mylar blankets. Other footage showed shelves stocked with snack bars, diapers and baby bottles.

Border Patrol: Two Men on Terror Watchlist Detained at Southern Border
Zachary Evans, National Review
Mon, April 5, 2021, 3:50 PM

U.S. Border Patrol agents detained two men on a federal terrorism watchlist who attempted to cross the southern border illegally, the agency said in a statement on Monday.

USBP detained the first suspect on January 29 and the second on March 30, while they attempted to cross into the U.S. near the Calexico border crossing in southern California. Both suspects are Yemeni nationals and are on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist and no-fly list. The suspects have since been transferred to federal custody.

“Part of the Border Patrol’s mission states we will protect the country from terrorists,” Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino said in a statement. “These apprehensions at our border illustrates the importance of our mission and how we can never stop being vigilant in our everyday mission to protect this great country.”

The latest announcement comes after the Border Patrol told Axios on March 16 that four men on the terrorism watchlist were detained between October 1, 2020 and March 2021. It was not immediately clear if the suspect detained on January 29 was included in the count provided to Axios.

“While encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon, they underscore the importance of the critical work our agents carry out on a daily basis to vet all individuals encountered at our borders,” USBP spokesman Justin Long told the Daily Caller.

The majority of migrants attempting to cross the southern border come from Mexico and Central America. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in March that the U.S. is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”

The Border Patrol detained over 171,000 migrants in March. Of those, 18,800 were unaccompanied minors, breaking the previous one-month record of 11,861 migrant children detained in May 2019.