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Rio Grande Valley is locus of border-crossing crisis

Immigrants arriving at rate of more than 35,000 a month

The Columbian
Published: June 14, 2014, 5:00pm

MISSION, Texas — The call went out on Border Patrol radios just before sundown one day last week: 31 immigrants spotted illegally crossing the Rio Grande on a raft. No sooner had the migrants been found hiding in the mesquite brush than another report came in: A woman and boy were walking up the riverbank.

The Rio Grande Valley has become ground zero for an unprecedented surge in families and unaccompanied children flooding across the southwest border, creating what the Obama administration is calling a humanitarian crisis as border officials struggle to accommodate new detainees. Largely from Central America, they are now arriving at a rate of more than 35,000 a month.

Anzalduas Park, a 96-acre expanse of close-cropped fields and woodland that sits on the southern bend of the river, has turned from an idyllic family recreation area into a high-traffic zone for illegal migration.

The number of children and teenagers traveling alone from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is expected to reach up to 90,000 across the southwest border by the end of the year, along with a surge of families with children seeking safe passage into the U.S.

“This is the hottest spot in the nation for crossings,” said Hidalgo County Precinct 3 Constable Lazaro “Larry” Gallardo, a valley native who said he has never seen a migration wave of such a scale during his 14 years in office. “Something’s got to be done because the numbers are just too high.”

Detentions along this stretch of the river have gone from up to 50 immigrants a week to up to 300. On Tuesday night, constables captured 100, on Monday nearly 200. Authorities are comparing the onslaught of homeless detainees to the displacements brought by Hurricane Katrina.

“The basic difference is that the vast majority of those people were here legally, whereas the current group has come here illegally,” said Donald Reay, executive director of the Southwest Border Sheriff’s Coalition. “You end up with a double-edged sword. You want to deal with the humanitarian side but also have to deal with the rule-of-law side.”

Many of the migrants are young women with children who tell authorities they are fleeing unrest in their homelands. Not long ago, a Honduran woman barely made it across the river before giving birth among the park’s red and blue picnic tables and signs warning “Children at Play.”

Some migrants cross on weekends and try to blend in with picnicking crowds in the park. But many willingly give themselves up, driven by reports rampant in Central America that immigrants who arrive with children are being allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely. (Officials believe smugglers use some families as decoys to divert authorities away from other migrants crossing elsewhere.)

One woman walking up the park riverbank this week with a boy made no attempt to flee when Hidalgo County deputy constable Sgt. Dan Broyles approached.

“Did you come on a raft?” Broyles, 51, asked in Spanish.

Yes, the woman said, after traveling by bus from Honduras.

“He’s your son?”

Yes, she said, 9 years old. His left arm was in a cast, the result of falling out of a tree before their trip. Around his neck he wore a black-and-white cross woven from plastic lanyards.

“Did you pay someone to cross?”

She said she paid $1,000 — 10 times the going rate before the recent influx.

Her son needs an eye operation she could not afford. She had heard that they would be allowed to stay in the U.S., at least long enough for her to find work and pay for the surgery.

“We can stay temporarily and get money and if we have to go, we go,” she said with tears in her eyes before Border Patrol agents loaded them into a van headed for a station already overcrowded with migrants.

Moments later, a Guatemalan woman walked up to Broyles out of the darkness, with her 15-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. The boy carried his sister, who wore a frilly green dress and patent leather shoes.

They had been hiding in the marsh, filled with tarantulas and lizards. Signs nearby warned of snakes.

Their 15-day journey, she said, had begun after her husband abandoned her, and his brother kicked them out of the family home. Now her jeans, studded with pink rhinestones, were covered in mud and she was crying with relief.

The McAllen Border Patrol station near here, which has space to detain 250 immigrants, instead houses 1,500 daily, according to Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera, who is vice president of the agents’ local union chapter. Other smaller stations in the valley are housing three times or twice their capacity, he said.

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