‘A nuanced crisis’: Border expert echoes Trump Administration on migration dynamics

Changing migration dynamics have Border Patrol and immigration shelters facing a crisis, a local border expert told ABC-7.

While President Trump describes the influx of migrants at the border as a national security crisis, immigration advocates say it’s a humanitarian issue.

“We often confuse uncontrolled immigration with border security, and they’re not one and the same,” said Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol Sector chief. “The whole idea of chaos and clutter that mass migration creates, I think it’s even more dangerous now.”

Manjarrez, now a UTEP professor, said there are fewer arrests being made at the border, less than half the more than one million made when he joined the agency in the 80s.

The danger, he said, comes from people migrating in large groups instead of individuals crossing. This, he said, makes it easier for criminal elements to be lost in the noise while agencies struggle to help those who are seeking a better life.

Even with fewer people being arrested, Homeland Security has described the current surge of migrants at the US Mexico border as “unprecedented.”

The issues being faced by Border Patrol and immigration shelters, Manjarrez said, is that the system is set up to handle single Mexican men, not families from Central America.

Manjarrez said this means Border Patrol agents spend a lot more time with paperwork than they do out in the field.

“Now, what you’re seeing is a lot of the cases that are either asylum type requests or administrative removal cases, that is actually time consuming,” Manjarez said, “It requires a lot more from the officer to do, and it it’s more administrative work, that’s less time in the field.”