Videos posted to social media showed several hundred migrants rushing past Texas National Guard and wire barricades to reach the border fence in El Paso, Texas.
The video appeared to have been first uploaded by James Breeden, a journalist covering the border region. The footage shows several Texas National Guard soldiers standing in the gap of a chain link and concertina wire barricade, as a large group of men attempt to rip down the obstacle. The National Guardsmen use their hands to push back the crowd, but eventually the group of migrants overwhelm the Guardsmen and sprinted past and reached the border fence.
Estimates of the size of the group of migrants varied between 500 and 700, mostly men.
According to Border Report, the migrants were taken for processing. A statement from Governor Greg Abbot’s office said that some would be prosecuted for destruction of property.
Video: James Breeden
Other videos filmed from the Mexican side of the border show groups of migrants holding down the wire fence to reach the border fence.
Another video showed several hundred migrants lined up at the border fence, filmed by a driver on the Loop 375, a highway parallel to the border fence in El Paso.
All of these videos were filmed near International Marker No. 36, on the US side of the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, near Midway Drive and Loop 375. According to U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Orlando Marrero-Rubio, this is
not a legal crossing point, and migrants should instead surrender themselves at ports of entry.
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| Approximate location of the videos. |
Border Patrol told El Paso news outlet
KTSM that the El Paso Sector is
averaging 920 daily encounters this March, a
decrease from the 1171 average daily encounters in fiscal year 2023.
Illegal and legal migration have been a continuous and growing point of political contention for the last several years in the United States. Illegal crossings sharply increased after US President Joe Biden entered office, in large part due to the expiration of the Title 42 policy and a poorly implemented root causes approach to stopping causes of migration in Central America.
As a result, a recent Pew Poll
found that 80% of Americans believe that the US government is doing a “bad job” of handling the border.
High profile killings of US citizens by illegal migrants, such as college student such as Laken Riley in February 2024, have also drawn attention to the border crisis and its downstream effects. At the same time, academics and pro-immigration commentators have dismissed fears of migrant crime, citing studies which have found that illegal migrants
commit less, not more crime than US citizens.
 |
| Graph from Washington Post. |
Sources: @LetyReporta Twitter,
@LetyReporta Twitter,
@calvariae_locus Twitter,
ABC 3340,
Washington Post,
@JamesBreeden Twitter,
@All_Source_News Twitter,
therealfitfamelpaso,
Border Report,
KTSM,
Border Report,
Pew Research Poll,
KVIA,
Stanford
