On March 12, a group of 1,000 migrants attempted to storm the U.S. southern border at a port of entry in El Paso, Texas, according to a new report from Fox LA.
Video posted to Twitter by Fox National Correspondent Bill Melugin shows the group pushing past Mexico’s side of the Paso Del Norte bridge, which connects El Paso to the city of Juarez.
BREAKING: Our contact in Juarez, MX tells us a massive group of at least 1,000 migrants just attempted to rush a port of entry in El Paso in an effort to get into the United States. Video shows them pushing past the Mexican side of Paso Del Norte bridge. Awaiting CBP comment. pic.twitter.com/lxriIB3TSm
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) March 12, 2023
A subsequent post from Melugin highlights a show of force used to stop the caravan, which included support from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in crown control gear, the Mexican military, physical barriers, and barbed wire.
BREAKING: Another video from our contact showing this massive migrant group trying to rush Paso Del Norte bridge in El Paso in an attempt to get into the United States. pic.twitter.com/q9v2myX333
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) March 12, 2023
El Paso has been a key battleground as the country has faced record high illegal migration since Biden became president.
At the end of the Fiscal Year 2022, CBP officials reported more than 2.7 million migrant encounters at the border, which is nearly one million more than were processed the previous year. That number is roughly the equivalent of all migrant encounters that occurred during all four years of the Trump presidency combined.
Though numbers from January 2023 show a slight easing of month-over-month migrant arrests, since Biden was sworn in, the U.S. has had nearly six million migrant encounters at the border.
In December of last year, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of emergency, which granted local authorities additional powers to handle the surge of migrants flooding into the city.
“We’ve been talking all day of what’s the best way of continuing to make sure that everyone’s safe,” Leeser told reporters at the time. “And as we see the increase in asylum seekers into our community, and we see the temperatures dropping, and we know that Title 42 looks like it’s going to be called back on Wednesday, we felt there was proper time today to call a state of emergency.”
The emergency declaration followed thousands of migrants entering the city and draining the resources of the migrant center that is able to accommodate just 400 migrants per day.
