EXCLUSIVE: It’s business as usual at the border while Biden deals with the Middle East: Daily Mail catches hundreds of migrants squeezing through the wall

First comes the phone, which is inserted through the steel bars and turned one way and then the other as the camera searches for border patrol agents.

Then comes the clinking, as the bars – already cut with an acetylene torch – are forced apart.

Only then will people come. Man, woman, child, woman, child, child, man, man, woman.

Eight bodies turn up on American soil next to Donald Trump’s border wall in Arizona. They turn right, armed with instructions on how to find Border Patrol agents and turn themselves in.

As President Joe Biden focuses on high-stakes diplomacy in the Middle East and a new crisis that threatens to engulf his administration, it’s business as usual along the southern border.

As the sun set Thursday evening, groups of as many as 150 young men made their way through the cactus-filled desert.

In just over an hour, at least 550 people came through the wall near the small border crossing in Lukeville, two and a half hours southwest of Tucson. Some came in small family groups, others in processions so large that their trudging feet threw a plume of dust into the air.

Business as usual for the migrants, the cartels that own the other side of the border, and for the tired Border Patrol agents whose only job now is the paperwork and radio for the buses to pick up the new arrivals.

“None of us signed up to be Uber drivers or babysitters,” said an industry agent who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘This is not what we joined for. We signed up for enforcement, not administration.”

That doesn’t mean the work is easy.

Two days ago, officers became involved in a shootout with coyotes – the nickname for human smugglers. And while the sun was low in the sky, the officer received reports of three people on the other side of the border with “long guns.”

Morale, he said, was collapsing. Nine supervisors had left Ajo Station, his section, since January.

“You see people getting out to go to investigative offices,” he said.

In the meantime, the arrivals continue to arrive. On Thursday there were people from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Nepal, India and Pakistan.

The routes are now easily accessible. From Senegal to Morocco, Spain, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico City and the north by bus, for example.

And the stories are just as well worn. That evening’s large contingent from India all told a similar story, rehearsed during the fifteen or so days of travel.

“It’s the political,” said 22-year-old Dhruv Patel, describing how people from politically connected families like him face the constant threat of kidnapping.

“Threatening calls,” said another young man in his group.

“Crime,” said a third.

The temperature dropped to a pleasant 75F as the sun disappeared behind the wall, easing conditions for cross riders in one of the least hospitable areas of the country.

This is accompanied by a record number of migrant detentions last month. Data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that there were 269,735 encounters at the southern border in September, surpassing last December’s record and bringing the 2023 total to date to 2.47 million.

The Biden administration has tried to respond. It recently announced that it would grant temporary legal status to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who were already in the United States as of July 31, while pledging to deport those who arrived illegally after that date and were not granted asylum.

And deportation flights to Venezuela have begun as part of a diplomatic thaw with the government of Nicolás Maduro.

That could provide a temporary reprieve, said Chris Clem, a former chief patrol officer in the nearby Yuma sector, but won’t change the overall trend.

“It’s a few hundred people a day, that’s a drop in the ocean,” he said.

“Until there is a significant policy change, until there is a significant focus on restoring our border security as a priority, I think we are going to suffer and morale is going to suffer.”

The conflict in the Middle East, he added, could have offered the Biden administration a solution, but instead it has become a way to distract from the problems at the border.

“What is happening in the Middle East, in Russia and with China could have been the basis for strengthening our border security efforts,” he said.

“Not because President Trump wanted to do it, they could have said there was a real national security interest in doing it now.”

In the meantime, nothing will change as long as there is a clogged immigration system, meaning arrivals can enter the country virtually freely while they wait years for their court hearings, say the men and women charged with patrolling the border.

“I would send them back in a heartbeat,” said an agent who works in the neighboring Yuma sector. “There’s no real penalty for someone coming in illegally.”