The site of last week’s migrant riot in El Paso had largely emptied by Monday, as the Texas National Guard sent in more troops and reinforced the crossing with more barbed wire.
On Thursday, about 600 migrants broke into the barrier set up by Texas soldiers and engaged in violent clashes, resulting in the arrest of one migrant for assaulting a service member.
Junior Evaristo-Benitez, 21, of Honduras, has been charged with assault on a public servant, a third-degree felony, and is being held in the El Paso County Jail, a spokesperson for the El Paso Department of Public Safety confirmed. Texas.
‘We continue to reinforce border barriers and repel illegal immigrants,’ Governor Greg Abbott. he tweeted on Monday.
“Texas is holding the line.”
A migrant seeks to breach a heavily fortified barbed wire fence from the bank of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, US, March 24.
Most migrants moved away from Gate 36, the site of last week’s unrest, in search of less fortified areas to enter the US.
A dozen additional immigrants were identified as “ringleaders” in planning Thursday’s riot and will also face federal charges, sources told DailyMail.com.
The migrants tried to storm the border on Wednesday night, throwing rocks at members of the Texas National Guard, but ended up dispersing, another source explained.
Footage of the chaos showed hordes of migrants first climbing over a triple layer of barbed wire and then pushing and overpowering national guardsmen trying to stop them.
Over the weekend, soldiers under Abbott continued to turn away migrants who had already crossed into the United States and were attempting to file asylum claims with the U.S. Border Patrol.
To reach federal agents, immigrants first had to get past the guards holding them.
Texas has spent a staggering $10 billion on the governor’s border security plan; However, it is unclear what impact it is having on border crossings.
The number of immigrants entering the country illegally through the Lone Star State has dropped sharply since December.
Once ground zero for the border crisis, migrant encounters in Eagle Pass have fallen from a high of 23,000 in one week to 2,600 in one week in March, according to federal statistics.
Instead, traffic has shifted to hotspots in California and Arizona.
In February, 87,000 migrants arrived in California and Arizona, compared to 53,000 in Texas, according to the US Border Patrol.
Last year, Texas saw 76,000 migrant encounters, while the other two states had a combined total of 55,000 migrant crossings.
In recent weeks, Eagle Pass, Texas, has become a ghost town. The once popular crossing point has seen a huge decline in migrant crossings.
Migrants wait behind barbed wire after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States in Eagle Pass, Texas, USA, on September 28.
Last week, 600 immigrants easily overpowered members of the Texas National Guard in El Paso by simply climbing the wire fence put up by Governor Abbott and simply covering them with blankets.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump listens as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in Shelby Park during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has credited his border security plan, Operation Lone Star, with the The New York Times estimated has cost taxpayers 10 billion dollars, with the decrease.
“The cartels have rerouted their routes to cross the border because Texas is the only state that is putting up a fight,” Abbott said during a news conference in Eagle Pass last month.
In January, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott seized a city park where migrants had been wading in large numbers across the river separating the United States and Mexico because the water was low there.
Abbott also expelled U.S. Border Patrol agents, claiming the federal government was not doing enough to stop illegal entries.
The Republican governor reinforced 2.5 miles of land he seized, preventing almost all immigrants from crossing at that particular location.
However, their actions simply pushed migrants toward other crossings in more rural areas.
Most border experts believe Abbott’s actions had an impact on crossings, but Mexican cartels have the final say over where migrants cross.
Mexico also ramps up border security around the new year, preventing migrants from reaching the border.
Under this order, Abbott claims that 505,800 illegal immigrants have been arrested and prevented from entering the United States since Operation Lone Star began in March 2021.
However, Texas has still seen more than 4 million immigrants cross the border into the state in the same time period.
A group of Venezuelans wore cardboard on their backs to avoid being cut as they crawled under a barbed wire barrier set up to prevent migrants from entering El Paso, Texas.
The Supreme Court did not rule that the chain-link fence Texas deployed was illegal. The high court only said that federal agents could cut it or move it if they needed to.
Texas has placed barbed wire at Shelby Park in the Eagle Pass, Texas, migrant hotspot for more than a year.
Abbott has only detained 12.6% of those who crossed into his state.
The Republican governor has also exported more than 107,000 immigrants to cities that said they would welcome immigrants, such as New York, Chicago and Washington, DC.
Additionally, the program has been controversial, as Abbott has withdrawn $360 million from prisons to pay for the program over just 10 months, and at least $875 million was diverted from the state’s emergency fund and sent to the border in 2022 alone, according to Texas Grandstand.