The Border Patrol has let go 50 recently apprehended migrants on the Texas border with Mexico, the first of several hundred who officials say will soon be released because there is no room to hold them, The Virginian-Pilot reported on Wednesday.
The normal procedure would be for the Border Patrol to hand over the illegal border crossers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for processing, with many of them ending up in detention facilities.
But officials said that both agencies have no more room due to a recent increase in the number of families arriving from Central America.
However, immigrant rights activists suggested the release was only a political stunt to create chaos in order to bolster President Donald Trump’s argument that there is a national emergency at the border, with some pointing out that these releases have not been done before even when there were much bigger influxes in the recent past.
A Border Patrol official denied that the release was due to politics.
There has been a substantial increase in border apprehensions recently, but the numbers are far below the levels that existed for decades until the mid-2000s, when there were about a million per year before falling drastically.
Border Patrol spokesman Carlos Diaz said the 50 migrants were given notices to appear in court and released on Tuesday to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which runs a local respite center, according to The Virginian-Pilot.
He added that 200 more migrants would be released on Wednesday.
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