The group posted a Facebook Live video of the encounter in which militia members repeatedly described it as an "invasion." Armed militia members started flocking to the desert on the outskirts of El Paso this past spring, including one group that detained 300 migrants. The Border Patrol released a grainy surveillance video of more than 1,000 people crossing the border illegally in El Paso on May 29, the largest group the agency ever encountered. The sector saw a more than sevenfold increase in apprehensions from October through June, compared with the same period a year earlier. "Let's see how much time they give me here."Īgents in the Border Patrol's El Paso sector made as many arrests during the entire 2012 fiscal year as they averaged in a single week in May.
"I feel very happy to be in the country," he said on a Sunday night in April before boarding a Dallas-bound bus. He came for economic reasons and had no plans to seek asylum. custody and given a notice to appear in immigration court. Martinez, 34, was freed with his 14-year-old son after four days in U.S. Then they wait for Border Patrol agents to arrest them and to be released to a robust network of private shelters in the city. With smugglers often dictating the route, Central Americans find they can easily cross the dried-up Rio Grande in El Paso with young children. It is unknown why the gunman traveled from his hometown near Dallas to El Paso, but the border city of 700,000 people has become a hotbed for immigrant crossings after years of being one of the sleepiest locations on the border. border this year - most strikingly in El Paso, where the suspected assailant was linked to an online screed against a "Hispanic invasion" and Latino asylum seekers. The channel crosses the city and, at one point, is less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the Walmart where a gunman attacked shoppers on Saturday, resulting in 22 deaths.Īn unprecedented wave of Central American families has reached the U.S. His smuggler's destination was Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: a dry river basin in view of El Paso's downtown office towers. EL PASO, Texas - Deny Martinez paid a smuggler $7,000 to take him and his teenage son from Honduras to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, across from El Paso, Texas.