Ana Milena Varón
Los Angeles, USA, Dec 12 (EFE). – The increased arrival of migrants at the Arizona border prompted politicians and officials, including several Democrats, to call on US President Joe Biden to send soldiers and resources to help restore normalcy in the state.
Arizona Senators Mark Kelly, a Democrat, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent, urged the White House to send the National Guard to Lukeville, one of the state’s main border crossings.
Lukeville has been closed since December 4, when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reassigned its staff to help process migrants.
Since mid-September, the remote desert west of Lukeville – southwest of Tucson – has become a major crossing point for migrants, with many either using open floodgates or squeezing through gaps cut by smugglers using battery-powered tools in the steel “bollard” fence.
“For far too long, Arizona communities have paid the price for Washington’s failures at the border,” argued the state senators, who echoed the call made by Raúl Grijalva, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives.
Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, launched Operation Secure over the weekend, which will allocate more state resources to bolster border security and deploy more personnel to reopen the port of Lukeville.
“As long as I’m governor, I’ll do whatever I can to end the chaos at the border,” she said in a video posted on social networking site X (formerly Twitter).
“I’m not afraid to stand up to politicians on either side who aren’t doing what’s in the best interest of Arizona,” she added.
Hobbs also met with of CBP to understand the situation in the Lukeville sector, and with leaders of the Tohono O’odham nation, who lives along the US-Mexico border, to ask Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for more resources to manage the flow of migrants across Indigenous reservations.
Last week Raul Grijalva, whose district includes all of Arizona’s ports of entry, urged the Biden istration to reopen Lukeville.
“The indefinite closure of Lukeville is a major disruption to the border communities I represent and many others across the state of Arizona,” Grijalva said.
“I urge you to reconsider this closure and consult with local stakeholders, including the Tohono O’odham Nation,” he added.
Governor Hobbs also sent a letter to President Biden, warning that “the decision to close the Lukeville Port of Entry has led to an unmitigated crisis in the area and put Arizona’s safety and commerce at risk
According to CBP, apprehensions of migrants in the Tucson sector, which includes Lukeville, increased 140% in October and November 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, and CBP has said that the flow of migrants has increased so far in December.
Human smugglers have chosen a remote location in Lukeville to drop off migrants who want to surrender to the Border Patrol and claim asylum.
Lukeville is one of the most used routes by Mexicans shopping in Arizona and by Americans on holiday in the Mexican state of Sonora, especially to Puerto Peñascos, known for its beaches.
“You can go the other way, but it adds about four hours to the trip and exposes you to going through drug-trafficking areas, so it’s better not to go,” Andrea Díaz, a resident of Tucson, told EFE.
Gov.Hobbs has called on the White House to provide more personnel, deploy the National Guard and reimburse the state for more than $512 million spent on border operations, including migrant transport and drug interdiction.
The economic problem caused by the shutdown has also added to the frustration of CBP agents over the management of the situation at the border.
“There are many of us who are unmotivated,” an agent of the Border Patrol (part of the CBP), who spoke on condition of anonymity, told EFE.
The agent complains that there are not enough resources to process asylum seekers and that this work has led them to neglect their security duties.
“If this is not stopped with measures that work, it will continue to happen,” he stressed. EFE
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