New Mexico, Far West Texas seeing record number of unaccompanied migrant children

 The highly publicized migrant surge of 2019 brought a record number of unaccompanied minors to Far West Texas and Southern New Mexico. Fiscal year 2021 still has two weeks to go but has already far surpassed that tally.

Border Patrol agents since Oct. 1 have taken custody of 20,950 minors from Central America and elsewhere in the El Paso Sector. That’s more than the 16,159 encountered in fiscal year 2019.

Many of those kids are under the age of 12 and are being smuggled and subsequently abandoned at the border by members of transnational criminal organizations that have taken over much of the activity on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Border Patrol. 

Late last month, for instance, agents from the Ysleta station spotted 20 migrant children walking north of the border barrier near the Rio Grande levee and parallel canals.

“The poor visibility, swift currents and high-water levels posed a real danger to the children falling and drowning,” the Border Patrol said in a statement. “Agents identified all the UCs as being citizens of Guatemala. The youngest person in the group was a 12-year-old girl.”

Since then, border agents have come across numerous other groups of unaccompanied minors ranging in age from 5 to 17 years old.

What’s happening here is not unique to the El Paso Sector, which includes all of New Mexico. The Border Patrol says its agents this fiscal year have encountered 130,710 unaccompanied children along the entire Southern border...MORE