Texas’ Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents encountered a group of over 700 illegal immigrants, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on Thursday.
From Epoch Times:
On Dec. 8 at around 3:20 a.m., 704 illegal immigrants crossed the Rio Grande River near a local ranch at Eagle Pass, according to a CBP press release. A gathering of over 100 individuals is categorized as a large group by the agency. Agents arrived at the scene and soon apprehended the immigrants for illegally entering the United States. The group consisted of 320 single males, 190 single females, 74 family units, and 12 unaccompanied children. There were 535 Cubans, 74 Nicaraguans, 49 Colombians, 31 Dominicans, nine Peruvians, and three each from Ecuador and Mexico. “All subjects were transported to the nearest processing center and processed in accordance with U.S. Customs and Border Protection policies,” CBP said. “This fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, the Del Rio Sector accounts for nearly 90 percent of all large groups encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol nationwide.” In a Dec. 7 Twitter post, Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens revealed that the agency apprehended 9,922 illegal immigrants over the past week. This included 22 large groups. In addition, 4,232 illegal immigrants were classified as “known gotaways,” referring to aliens who have evaded patrol agents but detected by surveillance. According to CBP data, agents at the southwest land border encountered 230,678 illegal immigrants in October this year, an increase of 40 percent from 164,837 in October 2021. The number was 71,929 in October 2020 and 45,139 in October 2019. The 2022 fiscal year saw 2.37 million encounters, up from 1.73 million in the 2021 fiscal year, and 458,088 encounters in fiscal year 2020.
