As a new 2,000-strong illegal-alien invasion army heads through Mexico for the U.S. border, another group of illegals already there found a different way to get into the country. They dug their way in.
Nearly 400 illegal Guatemalans tunneled under the border barrier and walked into the waiting arms of border agents.
That was near Yuma.
Near Nogales, authorities found yet another drug tunnel — the third in less than 30 days when discovered last week.
Tunnels Found
The reports on the tunnels in Arizona come from the Arizona Republic, which said the 376 illegal aliens who popped up on the American side of the border are the “largest single group of migrant families and minors ever recorded” in the area.
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Among the crowd were 176 minors, 30 of whom were unaccompanied.
Almost all were Guatemalans “seeking asylum,” which means they’ll likely be released into the United States until their claims are found false, as 72 percent of them are. The problem will be finding and deporting them after they disappear.
Anyway, the illegals surfaced a little before noon on Monday, the newspaper reported, about 4.5 miles the San Luis port of entry.
That raises the question of why they didn’t present themselves at San Luis. But at any rate, a border agent told the newspaper that smugglers helped the border-crashing illegals dig “seven holes in the sandy soil underneath the bollard-style fence and the metal plates welded to the bottom of the barriers.”
That barrier was intended to stop vehicles, not tunnel tunnel-diggers, the agent told the newspaper.
“Since the group was so large,” the newspaper reported, “the Border Patrol had to pull agents from other assignments to help process and transport the migrants using any vehicles at their disposal, including patrol cars, vans and buses.” Moving the pack of illegals required several trips.
This group of tunnel-diggers aside, border border agents face a tsunami of illegal-alien families and unaccompanied minors. The numbers are staggering, and represent a Camp-of-the-Saints-like invasion of the country.
In the first two months of fiscal 2019, border agents collared 48,287 illegal-alien families and 10,625 unaccompanied minors. Another 9,160 inadmissible families and 859 in admissible unaccompanied minors showed up at ports of entry.
Numbers for December and January are not available because of the government shutdown.
In fiscal 2018, 107,212 families and 50,036 unaccompanied minors were caught jumping the border, while 53,901 inadmissible families and 8,624 inadmissible unaccompanied minors presented themselves at legal ports of entry.
Why so many families and kids? As the border agent told the Republic, smugglers know “that if you travel with a child, or there’s a child with you when you cross, then you have to be released within 20 days.” the agent said. “That’s what these smugglers are relying on. And that’s what these individuals are relying on.”
And, then again, they are released into the country. “Which is why you see such a large number — 176 of these individuals are children,” he continued, “because they know the loopholes in our immigration system and they know how to exploit it, and that’s what they do.”
Drug Tunnel
Meanwhile, the Republic reported last week, Mexican cops found yet another a drug tunnel in Nogales, Mexico across the border from Nogales, Arizona.
This one, the third discovered in less than a month, was about 32 feet long, the newspaper reported.
Although most drugs come into the United States through legal ports of entry, “tunnels have become an increasingly common tactic that smugglers have used to get around stricter enforcement at the border,” the newspaper reported, “especially in sections that have had physical barriers in place for many years and decades, such as Arizona and California’s borders with Mexico.”
Nogales, apparently, is a prime spot for tunnelers.
“Just last week, Mexican Federal Police located a 65-foot tunnel inside an abandoned business in Nogales, Sonora, about four blocks south of the international boundary,” the newspaper reported.
A week before Christmas, Mexican authorities and Customs and Border Patrol uncovered an incomplete 50-footer, 44 feet of which were in Arizona.
Photo: JeffGoulden/iStock/Getty Images Plus
