There were 435 incidents in the Rio Grande Valley sector of families self-separating after being apprehended crossing together between February 24th and March 23rd, according to Border Patrol.
Border Patrol detained 600 families for several days under the Anzalduas International Bridge in Mission, Texas. Migrants were held from Saturday to Monday, and were not provided with adequate shelter or medical care.
McAllen and Laredo, Texas will begin receiving Remain in Mexico enrollees this week. They will be tested for Covid in Mexico before crossing the border.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector were authorized on Saturday to begin releasing migrants from custody before they had been given court dates. Some were given temporary identification, and others were told they would be contacted within 30 days.
Asylum-seekers being flown from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso due to limited capacity are being expelled to Mexico by CBP, according to the Dallas Morning News. Exact numbers are unclear, but at least 50 migrants have been expelled into Juarez.
El Paso will begin receiving two flights per day, each carrying 135 migrants from the Rio Grande Valley sector. The migrants will be processed in El Paso and stay at shelters until arrangements are made for them to connect with family in the United States.
108 migrants in Brownsville tested positive for Covid-19, provoking an outcry from, among others, the Texas governor who repealed a mask mandate days before. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) also reported that an unidentified number of additional Border Patrol agents are being sent to the Rio Grande Valley sector on 30-day assignments to help manage the situation on the border.
Some Remain in Mexico enrollees are being allowed into the United States as of Friday, February 19, first at the San Diego port of entry and later through Brownsville and El Paso as well. Processing will be slow at first, with only a few hundred entering per day.
Freezing weather, with temperatures dropping to 25 degrees, has hit a migrant camp in Matamoros where Remain in Mexico enrollees await their turn to enter the United States.
The Border Patrol’s Tethered Aerostat Radar System (also known as TARS or “eye in the sky”) is being dismantled, according to U.S. Rep Henry Cuellar. It costs $30 million per year to operate the blimps in South Texas, and it is being scrapped primarily to save money.
A migrant attempting to cross the border into Texas near the Hidalgo port of entry was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent who was allegedly trying to arrest him, according to CBP. The case is under investigation by CBP, the FBI, and the Department of Human Services Office of the Inspector General.
CBP announced that it is building soft-sided (tent) processing facilities in Donna, Texas that will be complete within 30 days. The facility will increase U.S. capacity to process apprehended migrants, particularly asylum seekers. A more permanent processing facility in McAllen, the Central Processing Center, is under renovation.
A conversation with Eduardo Canales of the South Texas Human Rights Center, about his organization’s fight to stop migrant deaths and to identify remains.
An investigation of the section of privately built border wall in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, paid for by an organization whose management is now under indictment for fraud.
Some Mexican families are among the hundreds of mostly Central Americans awaiting their turn to seek asylum on the U.S. side of the border in Matamoros, Mexico.
An audio report and accompanying text, reported from the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, and Mexico City, about the impact of the Trump administration’s virtual ending of the right to asylum at the border during the pandemic.
A section of private border wall on the banks of the Rio Grande in south Texas, built by a pro-Trump company with donated funds, is threatened by erosion.
