By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz on Friday publicly appealed to migrants planning to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, urging them not to place their lives in the hands of human smugglers.
Ortiz visited Del Rio to present awards to area agents, to meet with some of the Border Patrol’s partners here and to sample chili from an agency chili cook-off in the civic center parking lot.
He spoke with the 830 Times about the challenges that lie ahead for the agency.
“We want to give a message to the migrant populations that we’re setting up legitimate pathways. If you make a decision to come to the U.S. border, and you cross, and you put your life in the hands of smugglers, there are no guarantees. That’s a tremendous risk that a migrant undertakes,” Ortiz said.
He asked migrants considering making the trek to the United States to have some patience.
“The U.S. government is making significant investments in the CBP One app (a mobile app for migrant services), the formal process, to institutionalize this migration continuum. Why wouldn’t you have some patience and see, and what we’ve seen is some demographics show tremendous patience, but we’ve seen others who are either encouraged by the cartels or the criminal organizations to come across at great risk to themselves and so, one, we’re going to do everything we can to secure the border. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I have enough men and women out there on patrol.
“If we apprehend you, and we’re able to put some sort of consequence in front of you because you do not warrant a legitimate immigration benefit, we’re going to do that,” he added.
Ortiz addressed what he believes are the biggest challenges facing his agency in 2023.
“One, getting other agencies to participate in ensuring that we manage these migration flows that are in front of us right now. So across the southwest border, I’ve got nine Border Patrol sectors, and I have five of those sectors that routinely are over 1,000 – and some over 2,000 – apprehensions in a 24-hour period. What we were able to do, in 2014 and 2019, when we had the unaccompanied children and family unit influxes, we were able to move resources from other sectors to help out South Texas, and now what we’re faced with is a whole different population,” Ortiz said.
“We have individuals from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and on and on and on, and they’re crossing in multiple locations. It isn’t just concentrated in one geographic sector. El Paso is seeing some significant numbers, out in our New Mexico corridor, and now they’re even crossing on the other side of El Paso. Tucson, Arizona, continues to be very problematic for us. San Diego has seen some increases. Fortunately, Del Rio, we’ve seen the numbers drop here. We’re averaging probably 500, 600, 650, apprehensions a day. For Del Rio, that’s very manageable,” he said.
“What we’ve seen now is a spike in the last seven days in the Rio Grande Valley. It isn’t uncommon now for them to see over 2,000 apprehensions in a 24-hour period, and so, fortunately, because Del Rio was faced with these higher numbers for a period of time, they got very efficient. We’ve got our processing facility, our Firefly facility right outside of Eagle Pass, and they do a phenomenal job of processing and then either repatriating or turning those individuals over to the other organizations, the NGOs,” Ortiz said.
“And so, now, Del Rio, which was decompressing by sending migrants to other sectors because we were so busy here are the recipients of migrants that are crossing in sectors that are much busier,” he added.
“So as you think about 2023, we have to be logisticians. We have to be experts at logistics, and we’re working with our partners in DOD. We have some tremendous partnerships with the Texas Department of Public Safety on the enforcement side of the house and so it’s just managing, balancing the enforcement mission and the humanitarian mission, for those asylum-seekers and processing those individuals so they can get before an asylum officer and then ultimately before an immigration judge,” the Border Patrol chief said.
Ortiz emphasized the Border Patrol’s mission is a balancing act.
“What was traditional border patrol, border security mission-set, where we focused on apprehending people and then putting them on a plane or a bus and sending them back south; now, there are so many different aspects, processing pathways, the populations that we’re seeing. We’re seeing people from China coming in Reynosa, in south Texas. We’re seeing folks from the Ukraine, from Russia, from Vietnam and the list goes on and on,” he said.
Ortiz said he is keeping an eye on the burgeoning conflict in the Sudan.
“We’ve seen similar situations occur in Haiti. We’ve seen similar situations occur in Somalia, and anytime that happens, we do tend to see an uptick in migration,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz said he is being mindful of the country’s northern border with Canada as well.
“So we had a couple of areas where we saw a higher concentration of migrants that were traveling into Canada and crossing the Canadian border into the U.S. at what we call Roxham Road, which is in the New York, Vermont area, and so what we were able to do is to send some Border Patrol agents, specialty units, some intelligence assets up there, and we were able to work with our Canadian partners and we’ve been able to pretty much shut a lot of that down,” Ortiz said.
“It really just goes to partnerships. We have to continue to partner with our government of Mexico, immigration officials, law enforcement officials. They have some challenges. They had a fire in Ciudad Juarez at a migrant facility, and that caused them to make some adjustments to how long they hold migrants in Mexican custody. Now it’s 72 hours, and so, what that does, it impacts us on the southwest border, and so we’re working with them very closely,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the Secretary wants to address these (migrant) flows as far south as he possibly can. Last week I sent a team to Panama, and we’re working with the Colombians to try and stem the flow through the Darien Gap, where a lot of the migrant traffic comes through.
“There’s a plan to push these joint processing centers, these migrant centers, in Central America, so if you have a legitimate asylum claim of fear, you can go to this migrant center and start your process there instead of showing up in Eagle Pass, Texas, or Sanderson, Texas, and then start your immigration process there.
“That may take a while, but it is part of the overarching plan, and then the third pillar of this is, we have quite a few people that are claiming credible fear, and we want to get them before an asylum officer, before an immigration judge, and if their claim of fear is not valid, put them on a plane and send them back,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz also addressed his own future plans.
“Obviously, I’ve been doing this for 32 years. I’ve enjoyed a wonderful career. The commissioner has asked me to stick around as long as I possibly can, and I will tell you my heart’s still in it. I still love what I do. I still love the men and women of this outfit. I love serving our communities and our country, and I’m going to try and continue in this position for as long as I can,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz spoke about looking ahead for the remainder of 2023.
“So what’s happening now, over the last three weeks, we’ve seen about a 1,000 increase in apprehensions every week, every seven-day period, across the entire southwest border, to include our other sectors in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Miami and up on the northern border, but most of it on the southwest border,” he said.
“Right now, we’re averaging about 7,700, 7,800 every 24 hours, and it’s not going to surprise me if we get to 8,000, 9,000 next week, and then the following week, 9,000 or 10,000. Do I expect us to get to 18,000? No, I don’t, because once you get to that point, not only do you start to see a crisis situation on the U.S. side of the border, but you start to see a crisis situation on the Mexican side of the border, and they don’t want that either,” he added.
“Once again, it’s a collective partnership. I make this comment quite a bit: We had 15,000 Haitians under the bridge here in Del Rio. We shut down the POEs. We moved resources to deal with those vulnerable populations, and all of a sudden, we didn’t have anybody cross anymore, and so you don’t want to get to that point where you have to close ports of entry because it’s important to our legitimate trade and travel, but we also recognize that there are some safety concerns for these communities, and we do not want that to be, that’s the last straw, and when we have to break some glass, it’ll be closure of POEs, but we don’t want to get to that point,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz spoke about the work being done by the men and women of the Border Patrol and his concerns about morale.
“Morale, wellness, mental health, all those factors are very, very important to me. That’s why today’s honoring of our men and women is so important. We’ve made a commitment to do everything we can to support them with resources. We’ve made some significant investments in our wellness programs, but we know we’re going to be busy. We know it’s going to tax the Border Patrol,” Ortiz said.
“I think what makes this situation different from what we’ve seen in previous situations is that when we go in to this environment, and we’re addressing these higher numbers, we look to the left, and we look to the right and we see our partners, our sheriff’s offices, our police departments, our military partners, our communities, our non-governmental organizations, sharing in that same workload, it makes it a little bit easier and more palatable for us. I’m confident. The men and women of the Border Patrol, we don’t panic. We get the job done.
“But I am concerned about the higher numbers, and I’m worried about the toll it’s going to take on our workforce, and we need to continuously remind them that, at the end of the day, officer safety, the safety of the migrants, the safety of our communities, is our number one priority,” Ortiz said.
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