Hundreds of immigrants are walking across the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, with only a handful of agents available to process them.
A new influx of asylum seekers in southern U.S. states has overwhelmed border agents who lack resources to patrol and catch those who run away.
Most migrants cross the border and immediately surrender to agents so they can seek asylum and remain in the U.S. while they are processed.
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona, show hundreds of newcomers carrying backpacks and walking their meager possessions along the wall.
They walk quietly to a processing camp and wait in a single line for officers to assess them and give them paperwork to stay temporarily.
Immigrants line up for processing after crossing the US-Mexico border at Lukeville, Arizona
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona, show hundreds of newcomers carrying backpacks and walking their meager belongings along the wall
Genuine asylum seekers can claim protection in the US, but the legality of crossing the border ad hoc outside a designated point of entry is murky.
Most migrants came from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, but others came from as far away as Afghanistan and India.
One of a group of Indian immigrants told reporters he had come to the US to escape “mortal danger,” but others said they were just coming to work.
Many will be immediately released or moved to cities like nearby Tucson, but southern states have also loaded tens of thousands of people onto buses and sent them to refuges in northern states like Chicago and New York.
There were 130,000 attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the first 17 days of November, and at least 167,000 so far in December.
Another hotspot, Eagle Pass in Texas, saw 14,000 migrants crossing on Tuesday near a town where only 30,000 Texans live.
Asylum seekers line the border wall near Lukeville waiting to surrender to border agents
The authorities are so thinly staffed that many will have to wait for hours, forcing them to sit on the ground
Border Patrol agents herd hundreds of migrants into lines at a processing center
A long line snakes across the gravel at the processing center in Lukeville after hundreds of migrants cross the border
Publicly available figures from the Department of Homeland Security show that border agents handled some 188,778 border crossings in October — a 14 percent drop from September. DHS declined to comment on the figures.
Eagle Pass has only 58 uniformed police officers and many of them also assist the Border Patrol in dealing with the crowds.
Border Patrol agents normally stationed at checkpoints along the route into the U.S. have also been redirected to assist in Eagle Pass.
Law enforcement officials fear drug cartels will take advantage of the situation to smuggle both people and drugs across the border amid the chaos.
“It's an absolute collapse of the border,” said Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a retired border agent and the top legal man in neighboring Terrell County.
'You increase the number of escapes, you increase the chance for cartels to successfully bring in drugs.
“It's a wide open border. Come as you please.”
Crowds of new arrivals await their turn to be processed by the Border Patrol after their surrender
Aerial view of migrants lining up at the border fence attempting to enter the US, in Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico
Migrants line up at the border fence to try to enter the US, in Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico
Cleveland added that it was no coincidence that Eagle Pass and Lukeville both had record increases at the same time.
“They'll engage in diversion in one part of the border just to get troops in that direction, and then they can get people or drugs in somewhere else,” he said.
“Cartels shape it the way they want, for their benefit.”
The federal government responded to the surge at the border by completely closing ports of entry, wreaking havoc on international trade.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, announced it would close rail lines into the U.S. at Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, to accommodate the influx of migrants.
Vehicle and pedestrian crossings at ports in San Ysidro, California, and Lukeville, Arizona, were also closed in recent weeks.
In Eagle Pass, the migrant crisis is disrupting the lives of people who commute to and from Mexico every day, turning commutes between the two countries that used to take less than 10 minutes into 11-hour waits due to international bridge closures.
Thousands of migrants wrapped in silver thermal blankets, many hoping to seek asylum in the US, have gathered under a bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, waiting for their chance to surrender to US Border Patrol.
Map of U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints along the southern border, according to the Government Accountability Office
“There are people working on both sides of the border, and right now everything is at a standstill,” Pepe Aranda, who lives in Eagle Pass, told DailyMail.com.
'It's terrible, especially during the Christmas holidays.'
About 60 percent of Eagle Pass's revenue comes from tolls at international bridge crossings.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) sent a letter to Mayorkas on Monday saying closing the railroads in Eagle Pass and El Paso would cost agricultural producers “millions” a day.
“The ongoing border crisis is no longer simply a national security and humanitarian crisis – it is an economic crisis. It is past time to enact policies that curb the record levels of migration at our southern border,” she wrote.
Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar blasted the Biden administration, saying “our border communities desperately need more federal resources, and we need stronger measures at the border.”