An interesting phenomenon is occurring on the southwestern border. Tucson is one of the slowest sectors to arrest immigrants by border agents, accounting for nearly 94% of his fentanyl seizures in November. These agents have advantages that other colleagues don’t have, and they seem to make the most of them to slow the flow of deadly drugs.
The Tucson sector in context. border guard Tucson Sector It serves 262 miles of the Southwest border, from the New Mexico border in the east to the Yuma County border in the west. It also has the largest staff, with approximately 3,700 executives. Agent — Of the nine Southwestern Border Sectors of the Border Patrol.
in the first two months 2023 In October and November, these agents arrested over 46,000 illegal immigrants. This is his rate of 757.5 people per day. This is up from his 690 daily immigration arrests by agents in the Tucson sector in fiscal year 2022, but the sector’s monthly arrests have risen since March when he surpassed 27,000. Quite stable.
Concerns in October were 19.5 per cent higher than the same month last year, and the November total was 8 per cent higher.
in comparison with Yuma Sector, sits directly to the west. Agent staffing is less than a quarter of his in the Tucson sector (at the end of 2018 she had 784 Yuma his agents). 2020the last year for which statistics are available), Yuma covers only about half the border (126 miles from the Pima County line to the Imperial Sand Dunes in California).
Yuma Border Patrol agents arrested just over 310,000 illegal immigrants in fiscal 2022 (an average of 849.5 per day, 23% more than in Tucson for the year), and in the first two months of fiscal 2023: Nearly 50,000 people were arrested (approximately 817 per day).
Therefore, the Yuma sector has fewer agents directly east than the Tucson sector, and Yuma agents handle more immigrants. But the difference doesn’t stop there.
Most immigrants arrested in the Tucson sector are Mexican citizens. They accounted for more than 63% of his total concerns in the sector in October and November, and nearly 70% in fiscal 2022.
Mexican citizens are a relative newcomer to the Yuma area, but accounted for just 7% of illegal immigration arrests in October and November. When 2022
The Tucson sector has another advantage over Yuma. Most of the immigrants arrested here are single adults. More than 79% of migrant anxiety in the Tucson sector in the first two months of FY23 related to single adults, as did almost 86% of the FY22 total.
By comparison, in Yuma, just 63% of arrests in October and November involved single adults, which is actually a figure in 2022 (where single adults accounted for just 58% of the sector’s arrests). ).
In contrast, 35% of arrests in the Yuma sector in the first two months of FY 2023, as well as 39.5% of arrests in FY 2022, were illegal immigrant adults with family unit (FMU) children. immigration.
Why is it important? While it takes an agent about eight hours on average to process her single adult from Mexico, “Outside Mexico” (OTM) immigration takes much longer, and family unit immigration processing takes longer. takes her 78.5 hours. In other words, processing OTMs and FMUs, on average, takes an agent much longer than processing a single Mexican adult.
But more importantly, agents can expedite the deportation of Mexican citizens as ordered by the CDC. title 42 Changes to the US Code in response to the Covid-19 pandemic are generally not an option available when dealing with OTM families and immigrants outside the “Northern Triangle” countries of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
As such, 63% of immigrants arrested and deported in the Tucson sector in October and November were deported under Title 42, itself down from 77% arrested and deported in FY2022.
As noted above, Yuma agents are dealing with very different populations, which has led to very different outcomes. Fewer than 5% (2,464) were arrested, down from 12% of Yuma arrests that resulted in Title 42 deportation in fiscal 2022.
Given all of this, agents in the Yuma sector spend more time catching, transporting, processing, and caring for immigrants than agents in the Tucson sector, who have more agents.
Fentanyl concerns. That brings me to fentanyl. many Of the approximately 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States, 2021.
of November, CBP officers (at the port) and Border Patrol agents (between the ports) seized approximately £19,200 of illegal drugs. That was just half the drug load in November 2021, but America’s drug overdose crisis shows no signs of abating.
Most of the illegal drugs seized were “hard drugs,” substances other than marijuana. Marijuana seizures at the Southwest border have been declining for years as states legalize the drug (still illegal at the federal level).
The three deadliest drugs, fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine, accounted for 13,700 pounds of drugs seized by CBP at the South West Border in November, or 71% of the total.
Most of the seizures of fentanyl, heroin and meth (13,500 pounds) were made by CBP agents at the port. many observers ( president) argues that almost all hard drugs entering the United States enter through ports in legal modes of transportation, such as private and commercial vehicles.
That may be true, but of course there’s no way to measure drugs that Border Patrol agents don’t seize between ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. Return to sector.
In November, Border Patrol agents seized 271 pounds of fentanyl, heroin and meth at the southwestern border. This was a drop of 64.5% for him since October when local investigators seized 763 pounds of drugs from him.
But here’s the problem — fentanyl, heroin, and meth seizures increased by more than 245% in the Tucson sector between October and November, with agents covering just 13.4% of the 1,954-mile southwest border. Because it occupies close to 40. Percentage of all Border Patrol arrests for these drugs (£107) at their borders in November.
And nearly all (104 pounds) of hard drug bouts in Tucson in November were due to fentanyl.given that 2 milligrams Fentanyl (a few grains) can be a lethal dose, and the 104 pounds of drug seized in the Tucson sector in November was enough to kill more than 23.5 million Americans.
Yes, November was an outlier for fentanyl seizures in the Tucson sector, but it wasn’t as big as you might think.
In 2022, border agents at the southwest border seized 2,200 pounds of fentanyl. £695 of that (31.6% of his total) was seized by agents in the Tucson Sector, which covers just 13.4% of his borders. More than 30% of his fentanyl seized by agents in October was also intercepted in the Tucson sector.
These seizures are all the more remarkable given that there are practically no large cities south of the sector line. Nogales in Sonora, Mexico is the largest. 300,000 Resident and not much else on the other side.
Compare that to Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. 1.8 million The inhabitants, or population of Mexicali — the sister city of Calexico, California — is a millionor Tijuana, Population 2.626 millionsouth of San Diego, California, the sixth largest city in Mexico.
Saber. In addition to the fact that the Tucson sector is relatively well staffed and agents have to deal with fewer OTMs and families than other sectors (and a relatively low number of illegal immigrants overall), other Another advantage they have over the sector is that local authorities have their own sophisticated anti-smuggling operations in the eastern part of the sector.
Regarding that operation, which goes by the name “Southeast Arizona Border Regional Enforcement (SABRE),” I September.
SABER is operated by the Cochise County Sheriff Mark Danellsand as part of that initiative, local lawmakers Jerry-rigged and operated hundreds of “Buckeye” game cameras at strategic locations along the border. Police officers (and a small number of SABER-assigned border guards) can be dispatched to arrest persons.
As I mentioned in a previous post, SABER has been very effective in deterring drug smuggling across the border into Cochise County, essentially pushing the cartels westward and santa cruz When Pima county. Still, agents in the Tucson sector still have to secure 178 miles of border, which is much easier than looking at the full 262 miles.
open question. Indeed, whether drugs are being smuggled exclusively through the ports, or whether the border patrol agents who are overwhelmed to deal with the surge of immigrants pouring across the border in response to the president’s reckless immigration policy, are cartelized. There is some controversy as to what is increasingly exploiting. across the largely undefended southwestern border.”
The notable seizure of hard drugs (including fentanyl in particular) by agents in the Tucson sector has led to cartels breaking the chaos the administration has created at the Southwest border to move the drugs that are killing tens of thousands of Americans into the United States. suggests that it is used by Agents in the Tucson sector have advantages their colleagues elsewhere don’t, and they’re making the most of them to slow that deadly tide.
