by Elizabeth Troutman | Jan 27, 2024 | News
By Elizabeth Troutman |
Human smugglers assaulted a Border Patrol agent with rocks while he was arresting several illegal immigrants near San Luis, Arizona, earlier this week, Border Patrol reported. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., called out the “lawlessness” of the incident.
“This lawlessness must come to an immediate halt,” Biggs said on Twitter.
Chief Patrol Agent Sean McGoffin said human smugglers threw rocks at the Border Patrol Agent hitting him in the head early Tuesday morning, leading to lacerations across the eye. An investigation is underway to bring those responsible to justice, according to Border Patrol.
“Wishing this agent a speedy recovery,” Biggs continued. “Many folks streaming across our border right now are armed and dangerous.”
McGoffin of the Yuma Sector Border Patrol said individuals were making an illegal entry into the area of the assault and the smugglers who were on the Mexican side of the border began throwing rocks.
The agent was taken to the hospital and is now on the road to recovery, according to McGoffin.
“The agent is doing okay,” McGoffin said. “We’re thankful for him being okay, but he did have to go and receive medical treatment. He’s currently not back to work yet, but we anticipate he will be in the near future, we’re just so thankful that he’s safe.”
McGoffin said that though overall assaults have been down over the previous year, every assault is serious and could be fatal.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Jan 8, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanksi |
A new wave of lawlessness is hitting America’s southern border.
Last week, Fox News reporter Bill Melugin shared a memo from the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector Intelligence Unit about “stolen/altered Guinea passports being encountered” in the region.
The Border Patrol’s alert revealed the following information from intelligence gathered in the field:
- Officials from the Guinean government may be advising people obtaining new passports they can change their age for them to have a better chance of entering the United States as minors. (most encounters are from adults claiming to be UAC’s)
- Another migrant claimed an illicit group stole many blank passport books from the ministry in Conakry and has been selling and issuing the passports without the proper procedures.
- It’s suspected that Guinean passports issued in Conakry after June of 2023 are most likely fraudulent or altered.
Melugin added that “hundreds of adult men from Guinea have been crossing illegally in the Tucson sector every day.”
The Fox News journalist also communicated a story from a couple of weeks ago, when he was in Lukeville, Arizona, and came across a Guinean man, who had just illegally entered the United States. Melugin posted that this man had told him that “he planned to go to Philadelphia” – likely based on an address that someone had procured for him.
This week, Ali Bradley, a National Correspondent for NewsNation, reported that out of 806,000+ illegal immigrants who have crossed into the United States since October 1, almost 206,000 of those encounters have occurred in the Tucson Sector, where Lukeville lies. For a number of months, the Tucson Sector has led the country in apprehensions, leading to an unprecedented closure of the Lukeville Port of Entry in recent weeks. ‘Gotaways’ are not factored into the number of registered encounters from CBP.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Dec 30, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Law enforcement at the front lines of the border crisis is looking for new recruits.
Last week, the Chief Patrol Agent for the Detroit Sector of the United States Border Patrol, Robert Danley, posted a notice to “X” that his agency is hiring. Chief Danley shared information about hiring incentives and the link for interested men and women to apply.
For years, the Border Patrol has been under duress from the deluge of illegal immigration across America’s southern border. The border has been ‘open,’ more or less, for decades, but the situation on the ground has reached unprecedented levels in the past ten years. Over the past three years, during the Biden Administration, the border crisis has arguably been at its peak, forcing the already thin ranks of Border Patrol agents to process hundreds of thousands of incoming illegal aliens.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 19,357 Border Patrol agents in Fiscal Year 2022.
Border Patrol agents have faced new threats in 2023, in addition to their wearisome workload at their stations, leading many to wonder how many individuals would want to sign up for what this job has become. In October, the Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, Art Del Cueto, posted a picture of online messages that contained threats and concerning solicitations about personal information for agents and members of their families.
The messages shared by Del Cueto included the following:
- “We will pay for any addresses of border patrol agents!!”
- “$200 your way if you get me a border patrol agent’s address”
- “$1k if you get me they mommas address”
- “We offer $$$ for information on BP agents”
- “Top dollar on good info”
- “I’ll post us torturing any bp agent u send”
Ali Bradley, a National Correspondent for NewsNation, shared additional insight from conversations with Border Patrol agents, stating that “the agency says the messages also show the intent to post the torture of BPAs on social media.”
Earlier this month, two wives of Border Patrol agents joined Fox News to talk about the crisis and their perceptions of the lawlessness through the eyes of their husbands. One of the women, Alison Anderson, said, “We have literally watched our border be handed over… he often talks about, why did our brothers die? Why did people die defending this country for this administration to sit there, lie about what they’re doing and hand over our border and our national security?”
In Fiscal Year 2023, there were 2,475,669 encounters of illegal immigrants at the southern border – in addition to the ‘gotaways’ who slipped by agents. Through the first two months of the newest fiscal year (October and November), there were 483,404 apprehensions at the southern border. Both months have outpaced FY 23s figures so far.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Corinne Murdock | Dec 3, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
U.S. Border Patrol (BP) agents nabbed 21 convicted sex offenders attempting to enter the country illegally in just over a month; all but one were pedophiles.
Agents operating in the Del Rio Sector caught the offenders. 20 had committed sex offenses against children, with the sole other apprehended illegal immigrant convicted of a sexual assault involving sodomy. The sex offenses against children included rape, enticement, exposure, sexual contact, assault, and lewd and lascivious battery.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) shared the BP update, reflecting that the apprehensions proved the severity of the ongoing border crisis.
“Great job by U.S. Border Patrol, but this just shows how serious our border crisis is!” said Lesko. “We MUST secure the border NOW.”
These latest apprehensions are part of the trend of serious offenders capitalizing on the effectively open border policy of the Biden administration.
In June, Del Rio Sector agents marked the apprehension of their 86th sex offender for the 2023 fiscal year. It is currently the 2024 fiscal year; BP runs its fiscal year from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
Overall, there have been over 284 illegal immigrants with criminal sexual offense convictions apprehended at the border this past fiscal year. That total marked a slight decline from the past two years: the 2021 fiscal year endured the worst totals at 488 illegal immigrants with criminal sexual offense convictions apprehended, followed by the 2022 fiscal year at 365. The 2018 and 2019 fiscal years were markedly low, with 80 and 58 apprehensions, respectively.
In all, the last fiscal year there were over 2.4 million illegal immigrant encounters along the southern border.
Not counting last month, the first month in the 2024 fiscal year, President Joe Biden’s administration has seen over 6.37 million illegal immigrant encounters along the southern border. October set another record, with nearly 241,000 illegal immigrant encounters compared to the 2023 and 2022 fiscal years, which endured over 231,500 and 164,800 encounters respectively.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 25, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be a hotspot for illegal immigration.
This past week, the U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent for the Tucson Border Sector, John R. Modlin, posted his weekly review of stats, showing the efforts of the men and women working under him.
Chief Modlin highlighted the following from his border sector that week:
- 14,300 Apprehensions
- 300 lbs of Fentanyl
- 183 Federal Criminal Cases
- 33 Rescues
- 15 Human Smuggling Events
- 7 Narcotics Events
- 2 Firearms Seized
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be one of the nation’s busiest regions, keeping agents on their toes as they seek to restore some semblance of order on the ground. In the first month of Fiscal Year 2024, October, this sector reported over 55,000 encounters of illegal immigrants, which was a 140.8% increase over the previous year’s numbers that month (22,938). Tucson Sector Officials recorded almost 374,000 arrests during the recently completed fiscal year.
These numbers, already significantly high for a sliver of the U.S.-Mexico border, do not represent the number of ‘gotaways’ escaping detection and making their way around the interior of America’s homeland. Nor do these figures fill in another major gap of the border crisis, which is the rampant drug smuggling that occurs all throughout the border – but especially in the Tucson sector. Drug cartels and smugglers occupy the time of border agents with thousands of arrests per day, while running drugs and ‘gotaways’ through other unmanned corridors. These dangerous factors of the porous border continue to haunt law enforcement at all levels as they attempt to do everything they can to protect innocent men, women, and children from harm.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
