CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico (September 20, 2021) – The Center for Immigration Studies has been on the ground in Texas and Mexico this week filming and interviewing illegal migrants and law enforcement as thousands flooded into Del Rio, Texas, forming a massive illegal immigrant shantytown that expanded to 15,000 in less than a week. As the Texas Department of Public Safety work to stop the flow by forming a Maginot Line of cruisers on the Texas side of the river and the federal homeland security agencies attempt to reduce the size of the shantytown, the Center explores the reason for the flood of illegal immigrants which overwhelmed U.S. capacity to process individuals in an orderly, safe manner.
Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow and man on the ground, said, “We need to know why this flood of migrants appeared in a normally slow areas of illegal immigrant crossing if we are to ensure this never happens again. An encampment of this size is a public safety and national security threat.”
In speaking to migrants passing through Ciudad Acuna on their way to Del Rio, Bensman spoke with dozens of migrants and asked the question: why are you heading to the U.S. now and why Del Rio? The answer, which the migrants provided independently in different places and at different times, was universal: on Sunday, September 12, the Mexican government effectively sent a mass of migrants it had bottled up for months in its southern states up to the American border. This move essentially foisted a humanitarian problem onto the Americans in a single week.
Bensman said, “CIS could find no public reporting of any official Mexico announcement or confirmation of these migrant accounts. But if their accounts are true, Mexico’s decision presents a clear diplomatic affront to the Biden administration, transferring a significant threat management and humanitarian challenge to America, not to mention a potential political problem for the Biden administration. The move hints at how Mexico’s leadership regards the Biden administration’s quid pro quo arrangements of aid for help with illegal immigration from Guatemala. Mexico can open the flood gates at any time.”
Why Del Rio? The Mexican cartels in this city do not involve themselves in human smuggling as they do in other parts of northern Mexico. Migrants who get to Acuna are free to cross themselves over the river without paying a tax or smuggling fee to ruthless Mexican cartels, with no fear of violent retribution for doing so on their own. These accounts square with prior CIS reporting from the area in the spring of 2021.
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