Border Patrol agents are encountering an average of 1,500 migrants per day along the El Paso, Texas, stretch of the southern border, The Hill reports, as public discord rages over the transport of migrants to Democrat-run cities.
El Paso's deputy city manager told NewsNation that at least nine buses leave the city bound for New York or Chicago every day.
Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, whose district covers part of El Paso, called the situation unprecedented.
"We've never seen anything like this," Gonzales said, according to the New York Post. "It's a scene that you would see in a Third-World country, not in the streets of El Paso.
"Everything that I've been told and every indication tells me that we haven't seen the worst yet."
El Paso's migrant situation comes as the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) recently uncovered a human smuggling attempt at an airfield in McAllen where 19 migrants from Central America were found aboard a plane headed for Houston.
According to The Hill, a concerned citizen tipped off authorities about three vehicles dropping the group off at the airport. The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly investigating the incident and Border Patrol is handling the migrants.
Border Patrol told the Post that most of the migrants overwhelming El Paso are from Venezuela and their numbers are averaging daily all-time highs.
Agents are seeing a record number of migrant encounters this year, with the latest figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection showing a 46.9% increase from October through July, compared to the same period the year before.
Officials recorded 24,916 encounters with migrants in July, which is an average of about 804 per day and is up 21.2% from July 2021, statistics show.
Under Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star, Texas DPS and the state's National Guard worked with Border Patrol to take 14 migrants from Mexico into custody who were hiding in the Rio Grande Valley brush.
Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at El Paso area ports of entry thwarted multiple narcotic smuggling attempts, involving fentanyl and methamphetamine, according to the agency.
The Mexican government recently accused the United States of not doing enough to stop guns from being trafficked into Mexico by the drug cartels, the Daily Caller reports.
During a visit to Juarez, Mexico, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the U.S. needs to do more.
"You have no reason on [your] territory to let someone with weapons cross into Mexico when you know it is illegal to have those weapons in our country," Ebrard reportedly said. "We are asking, at the very least, for a similar effort."
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