U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar confirmed the authenticity of a video circulating on social media that shows dozens of migrants waiting in line on the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande, as they wait to board an inflatable raft to illegally cross into the U.S.
Cuellar said he would not comment on the source but said it happened in the Valley sometime this month.
“I haven’t seen them lined up like that,” Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council in the Rio Grande Valley, said Friday. “I saw the video yesterday. I don’t know when it was taken or by whom, but I have not seen that, that blatant.”
Perez said the situation in the video is likely, though.
“When we’re having to be tied up with the processing, detention and transport, we don’t have as many agents as we need to have, he said, adding, “That’s probably is something’s that is going on a lot more, we’re just not able to see it.”
It’s unclear when the video was recorded.
The number of unauthorized immigrants coming into the country is spiking at rates similar to those seen in 2019.
The agency reported on Tuesday that 29,792 children were apprehended from October 2020 through February 2021. Of those, about 3,000 were under the age of 12.
A total of 100,441 apprehensions were reported across the southwest border last month. It represented a 28% increase over January 2021. Nearly three quarters, 72,113, were expelled from the border through a public health federal code known as Title 42, which was implemented by the Trump administration.
