Undocumented immigrants are teaming up with unaccompanied and unrelated minors, pretending to be families to gain access to the US by inventing stories of crises at home. This is according to The Washington Times’ review of internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security.
The surge of undocumented immigrants into the US in recent months has partly been the result of such tactics. The intelligence unit of US Border Patrol says the surge was part of a rush to try to enter the country before the Presidential election. The 2016 fiscal year set new records in the US for the number of undocumented families and unaccompanied minors trying to enter the country. The first month of the 2017 fiscal year indicates that those records could soon be broken.
These changes are because some undocumented immigrants have worked out how to play the system, according to intelligence analysts. The analysts claim that many undocumented immigrants are no longer paying for the services of human smugglers. Instead, they save money by making the trip by themselves, resulting in many more immigrants attempting to get into the US, who would otherwise have been unable to afford to try.
Some families have split up to enable a parent to take one child, adding to the likelihood of quick release from custody. In others cases, agents have been fooled by smugglers coaching undocumented immigrant minors to lie and pairing them with unrelated adults.