El Paso is a ghost town, days after stampede involving 600 migrants, as Governor Abbott threatens full force of law as part of $10 BILLION border plan
The site of last week’s migrant riot in El Paso was largely empty on Monday as the Texas National Guard sent in more troops and fortified the border crossing with more barbed wire.
On Thursday, some 600 migrants stormed the barrier placed by Texas soldiers and engaged in violent clashes – resulting in the arrest of one migrant for assaulting a soldier.
Junior Evaristo-Benitez, 21, of Honduras, has been charged with assault on a public servant, a third-degree felony, and is being held in the El Paso County Jail, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson confirmed.
“We continue to strengthen border barriers and repel illegal immigrants,” said Governor Greg Abbott tweeted Monday.
“Texas is holding the line.”
A migrant man appears to break through a heavily fortified barbed wire fence from the bank of the Rio Grande River in El Paso, Texas, U.S., March 24
Most migrants moved away from Gate 36, the site of last week’s riot, in search of less fortified areas to enter the US
A dozen additional migrants, who were identified as “ringleaders” in planning Thursday’s riot, will also face federal charges, sources told DailyMail.com.
The migrants had tried to storm the border on Wednesday evening, throwing rocks at members of the Texas National Guard, but eventually dispersed, another source explained.
Images from the madhouse showed hordes of migrants first climbing over a triple layer of barbed wire and then pushing past them, overwhelming National Guard members who tried to stop them.
Over the weekend, soldiers led by Abbott continued to turn away migrants who had already crossed into the U.S. and attempted to lodge asylum claims with U.S. Border Patrol.
To reach federal agents, migrants first had to get past guards holding the .
Texas has spent as much as $10 billion on the governor’s border security plan, but it’s unclear how much impact it will have on border crossings.
The number of migrants entering the country illegally through the Lone Star State has fallen sharply since December.
Once ground zero in the border crisis, migrant encounters in Eagle Pass have fallen from a high of 23,000 in one week to 2,600 in one week of March, according to federal statistics.
Instead, traffic has shifted to hotspots in California and Arizona.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol, 87,000 migrants entered California and Arizona in February, compared to 53,000 in Texas.
Last year, Texas saw 76,000 migrant encounters, while the other two states saw a combined total of 55,000 migrant crossings.
In recent weeks, Eagle Pass, Texas has become a ghost town. The once popular crossing has seen a huge drop in the number of migrants crossing
Migrants wait behind barbed wire after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States in Eagle Pass, Texas, USA, September 28
Last week, 600 migrants easily overpowered members of the Texas National Guard in El Paso by simply climbing over fencing installed by Governor Abbott by simply covering it with blankets.
Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, listens as Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks in Shelby Park during a visit to the US-Mexico border, Thursday, February 29, 2024
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has credited his border security plan, Operation Lone Star New York Times estimated the decline has cost taxpayers $10 billion.
“The cartels have rerouted their routes to cross the border because Texas is the only state that is resisting,” Abbott said at a news conference in Eagle Pass last month.
In January, Texas Governor Greg Abbott seized a city park where migrants were wading in large numbers across the river dividing the US and Mexico because the water was low there.
Abbott also kicked out U.S. Border Patrol agents, claiming the federal government was not doing enough to stop illegal entries.
The Republican governor fortified the country with 4 kilometers of land that he seized, causing almost all migrants to cross the border at that specific location.
However, his actions simply pushed migrants to other border crossings in more rural areas.
Most border experts believe that Abbott’s actions have had an impact on border crossings, but Mexican cartels have the ultimate say in where migrants cross.
Mexico will also increase border security around the new year, meaning migrants will never be able to reach the border again.
Under this order, Abbott claims that 505,800 illegal immigrants have been arrested and prevented from entering the US since Operation Lone Star began in March 2021.
However, Texas has still seen more than 4 million migrants flow across the border into the state during the same period.
A group of Venezuelans used cardboard on their backs to avoid being cut as they crawled under a barbed wire barrier erected to prevent migrants from entering El Paso, Texas.
The Supreme Court did not rule that the fencing Texas installed was illegal. The Supreme Court said only that federal agents could cut or move it if necessary
Texas placed razor wire in Shelby Park, in the migrant hotspot of Eagle Pass, Texas, for more than a year
Abbott has stopped just 12.6% of those entering his state.
The Republican governor has also exported more than 107,000 migrants to cities that claimed to welcome migrants, such as New York, Chicago and Washington, DC.
Furthermore, the program is controversial, as Abbott has taken $360 million from prisons to pay for the program for just ten months, and at least $875 million has been taken from the state’s emergency fund and sent to the border in 2022 alone. to the Texas Tribune.