Customs and Border Protection said it was closing one of two bridges to vehicles in Eagle Pass, Texas, a town of about 30,000 people that, for a while last year, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. The agency is also reducing vehicle entries in Lukeville, Arizona, a remote desert crossing that has become a major migration route in recent months.

“The U.S. is continuing to see increased levels of migrant encounters at the Southwest Border, fueled by smugglers peddling disinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals and encourage migration,” Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. “As we respond with additional resources and apply consequences for unlawful entry, the migration trends shift as well.

Lukeville lies in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which was the busiest of nine along the U.S.-Mexico border by far in October.

John Modlin, the sector chief, said Sunday that all sector social media accounts would be temporarily reduced in response to “the ongoing migration surge.”

“At this time, all available personnel are needed to address the unprecedented flow,” Modlin wrote on X, the platform formerly called Twitter. “The social media team will return once the situation permits.”

He returned a short time later to apologize for the “hastily written statement” and pledged transparency.

Staffing cuts to legal trade and travel are the latest response to demands for processing people who cross the border illegally, often to seek asylum. A major pedestrian crossing in San Diego was closed for weeks starting in September as authorities turned more attention to people who entered the country without permission.

While arrests for illegal crossing fell in October, September was the second-highest month on record.

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With the new gate, the third in the San Diego region, officials aim to reduce long port-of-entry wait times. The goal with the added crossing is a wait time of no more than 20 minutes.

Currently, passenger vehicles and commercial trucks crossing the border between Tijuana and San Diego may endure tedious waits — harming business, as well as air quality as they idle in line — officials said.

“This new port of entry will not only spur economic activity, but it will also improve the quality of life for the millions of Californians and Mexicans who frequently cross one of the busiest borders in the world,” said California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis.

She called the agreement “a great example of California’s leadership in combating climate change. The project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve mobility in the region.”

Otay Mesa East, also known as the Otay II project, is expected to provide an economic boost of $1.8 billion annually, officials said.

With the signing of the memorandum of understanding, California and Mexico have agreed to adhere to construction timelines, to quickly resolve any policy issues, and to establish a framework to share toll revenues for project funding.

“We know what it takes to get it done. We have certain milestones to meet, and now we have this document that memorializes our commitment to the project,” said California Secretary of Transportation David S. Kim after the signing ceremony Monday at the construction site in Otay Mesa.

On the California side, the $1-billion project has already secured $565 million in local, state and federal funding. The remainder is expected to be financed mostly through toll revenue.

On Mexico’s side, a first-phase investment of more than $186 million is under consideration to cover construction work and access roads, according to Roberto Velasco, director of North America with the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Last year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador included the Otay II project within an infrastructure plan aiming to reactivate the economy.

Velasco emphasized that this project was a symbol of a strong binational relationship. “We believe in building bridges, not in building walls, and this is important for us in that sense,” he said.

“This is the future of the U.S.-Mexico relationship that we want — a future where we are more connected, and we allow for the many different possibilities that life in the border offers to both of our countries.”

Initially, Otay Mesa East will have five lanes for vehicles and five more for commercial trucks, with the option for these to be interchangeable depending on the time and demand, explained María Rodríguez-Molina, project manager with the San Diego Assn. of Governments.

Tolls will not be collected at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection point. They will be collected electronically or at toll booths that will be placed within the U.S. along State Route 11. Studies are still underway to determine the cost.

Toll collection will be for both northbound and southbound traffic. The revenue will be divided between the U.S. and Mexico, added Mario Orso, project director with Caltrans.

On the U.S. side, the project started eight years ago with the construction of State Route 11. Construction of the new port of entry is now underway on a 100-acre area a few miles east of the current Otay Mesa border crossing.

In Tijuana, construction is expected to begin next year to meet the agreed-upon timeframe.

Alexandra Mendoza | Contributed

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PHOENIX (AP) — An increasing number of American citizens have been apprehended as they have tried to smuggle illegal drugs into the U.S. since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, an uptick that’s come amid travel restrictions at the border with Mexico.

For more than a year, the closure of the southern border to nonessential traffic has sharply limited the number of foreign citizens entering the U.S. by land. The rules have been extended until at least June 21, but Mexican authorities have allowed most U.S. citizens to walk or drive south across the border with relative ease.

Law enforcement officials and drug trafficking experts say the border rules — put in place in April 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus — and their lopsided enforcement are driving the rise in U.S. citizens involved in borderland drug busts. Mexican traffickers, however, have long recruited Americans for the job.

U.S. citizens were apprehended nearly seven times more often than Mexican citizens between October 2020 and March 31 for trying to smuggle drugs in vehicles, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows. In the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, Americans were caught roughly twice as often as Mexicans.

“As cross-border travel shifted to essential travel only, criminal organizations shifted their operations as well,” the agency said in a recent statement. It noted it’s increasingly seized drugs trafficked by U.S. citizens and by commercial trucks during the pandemic. Both groups are exempt from the restrictions at U.S. land borders.

Despite early pandemic disruptions to the global drug trade, illegal substances have since been pouring into the U.S. — the world’s largest consumer of them. Customs and Border Protection says narcotics seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border have increased slightly in the 2021 fiscal year, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said Mexican traffickers’ ability to move drugs into the country had stayed “largely intact.”

Most illegal drugs in the U.S., particularly narcotics, enter at the southern border. Americans are critical to these operations, trafficking experts say.

“The perception is that U.S. citizens are given less scrutiny by Border Patrol and CBP,” said Michael Corbett, who worked at the Drug Enforcement Administration for 30 years and is now a narcotics expert witness. “Smuggling drugs is a risk management enterprise. They’re looking for whatever methods they can come across to most safely and efficiently move drugs across the border.”

Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief in El Paso and Tucson, said “the use of American citizens kind of ebbs and flows.

“Drug organizations … are much more adept at changing than the government is,” said Manjarrez, now a professor of border and national security at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Customs and Border Protection figures show the agency seized nearly 92,000 pounds (41,730 kilograms) of drugs from vehicles at southern ports of entry between October 2020 and May.

U.S. citizens had been apprehended about 2,400 times by late March for drug smuggling during inspections of vehicles crossing those checkpoints. In comparison, just 361 such apprehensions during the same period involved Mexican citizens, who are generally second — behind Americans — for drug trafficking arrests at ports of entry.

Arrests of U.S. citizens who bring drugs through in their bodies also have risen. In the first four months of the 2021 fiscal year, 505 Americans were arrested with drugs concealed in their bodies at southern checkpoints, compared with just 35 people from all other countries during the same period.

Though illegal substances brought in by that type of courier represent just a fraction of the overall drugs crossing into the U.S., those apprehensions in fiscal year 2018 were more balanced between U.S. citizens and non-citizens at 467 vs. 386, respectively, Customs and Border Protection data shows.

Apprehension numbers for U.S. and Mexican citizens caught driving drugs over the border in recent years also were not as far apart as this year — 1,693 vs. 793 in 2018 and 2,694 vs. 1,218 in 2019, respectively.

In many cases, drug couriers in the U.S. are recruited for one-off assignments to drive a shipment across the border in exchange for a lump sum payment based on how much product they are transporting, experts say.

Yatziri Barboza was one. In March, the 24-year-old from Houston was arrested after an X-ray and further inspection at a port of entry in Laredo, Texas, uncovered nearly 127 pounds (58 kilograms) of liquid methamphetamine concealed in the gas tank of the SUV she was driving, court documents said.

Barboza told law enforcement officials that she was to drive the shipment to an undisclosed location in Houston in exchange for $10,000, according to a criminal complaint.

Mryna Montemayor, a public defender representing Barboza, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Similarly, 23-year-old Mike Mendoza, also of Houston, was arrested in February after border agents stopped him at the Juarez–Lincoln International Bridge in Laredo while driving a pickup truck with 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of meth stashed in its tires, according to a criminal complaint. Authorities estimate the street value of the drugs to be $360,000.

Abundio Rene Cantu, a lawyer representing Mendoza, said he believes his client was offered a reward “in the thousands” of dollars. He denied knowing which Mexican criminal organization recruited Mendoza, who had been working in construction.

“This was not something he was regularly involved in,” Cantu said of Mendoza, who pleaded guilty to a drug smuggling charge in March. “But generally speaking … people sometimes may find themselves in a bind. And so they get caught up with somebody that knows somebody from a Mexican organization, and they offer the money to get involved into this type of activity.”

Cantu estimates the number of cases he’s handled of U.S. citizens facing drug smuggling charges has doubled since 2019. He largely credits the partial closure of the border.

“It’s just opened up that opportunity to get new recruits,” he said. “U.S. citizens … people that are struggling financially that are going to be allowed to come in.”

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The number of migrants being stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border has been rising steadily since last April, and the administration is still rapidly expelling most single adults and families under a public health order issued by President Donald Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it is allowing teens and children to stay, at least temporarily, and they have been coming in ever larger numbers. More than 4,000 migrant children were being held by the Border Patrol custody as of Sunday, including at least 3,000 in custody longer than the 72-hour limit set by a court order, according to a U.S. official. The agency took in an additional 561 on Monday, twice the recent average, according to a second official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss figures not yet publicly released.

It has put President Joe Biden in a difficult spot, blasted by Republicans for what they view as encouragement to illegal border crossers and by some Democrats over the the prolonged detention of minors. It’s also a challenge to his effort to overhaul the broader Trump policies that sought to curtail both legal and illegal immigration. “The situation at the southwest border is difficult,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas conceded Tuesday in his most extensive remarks to date on the subject. “We are working around the clock to manage it and we, will continue to do so. That is our job.” The number of migrants attempting to cross the border is at the highest level since March 2019, with Mayorkas warning that it is on pace to hit a 20-year peak for the year. The number of children crossing by themselves, mostly from Central America, appears to be surging in particular in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The Border Patrol took in 280 there alone on Monday.

The total of 561 unaccompanied minors from Monday offers a snapshot of how quickly conditions have changed along the border. That was up 60% from the daily average in February, one of the officials said. In May 2019, during the last surge, the one-day peak was 370 teens and children. Children and teens crossing by themselves rose 60% from this January to more than 9,400 in February, according to the most recent statistics released publicly by U.S.

Customs and Border Protection. The Health and Human Services Department plans to open shelter facilities at Moffett Federal Airfield near San Francisco and in Pecos, Texas, to handle the flow. It is also looking to expand a facility in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, to hold 2,000. Also, the Dallas Convention Center is scheduled to begin holding children as early as Wednesday with plans to accommodate up to 3,000.

Another makeshift holding center in Midland, Texas, that opened last weekend for 700 children had 485 on Monday. Some of the increase in adults is due to people who are repeatedly caught after being expelled under the public health order issued last year to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Other factors include economic upheaval caused by the pandemic and recent hurricanes that worsened living conditions in Central America. Officials say it’s also likely that smugglers have encouraged people to try to cross under the new administration.

Mayorkas said the a surge in the number of children is a challenge for the Border Patrol and other agencies amid the coronavirus pandemic. But he rejected a Trump-era policy of sending them immediately back to Mexico or other countries. “They are vulnerable children and we have ended the prior administration’s practice of expelling them,” Mayorkas said. Though there have been previous migrant surges, including under Trump, Republicans in Congress say that Biden’s support for new immigration legislation and his decision to allow people to make legal asylum claims have become a magnet for migrants. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen.

Jim Inhofe held up a photo of a small crowd of demonstrators in Tijuana, Mexico, wearing matching T-shirts with the words “Biden, Please Let us in” that circulated widely on social media in recent days. “They’re all coming across the border, they’re coming fast, and they’re wearing Biden T-shirts,” said the Oklahoma Republican. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a delegation of a dozen Republican lawmakers on Monday to the border in Texas and blamed the Biden administration for driving an increase in migrants by actions that include supporting legislation in Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people now in the country and halting border wall construction. “The sad part about all of this is it didn’t have to happen. This crisis was created by the presidential policies of this new administration,” McCarthy said.

Biden pushed back in an interview Tuesday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, noting previous surges under Trump and pointing out that his administration has been trying to discourage people from crossing while it works to restore an asylum system undermined by his predecessor. “I heard the other day that they’re coming because they know I’m a nice guy. Yeah, well here’s the deal. They’re not.” Trump did, in fact, confront a similar surge in 2019 even as he rushed to expand the border wall system along the border and forced people seeking asylum to do so in Central America or remain in Mexico.

A year earlier he forcibly separated migrant children from their families as part of a zero-tolerance campaign that became one of the most significant political challenges of his administration. The Biden administration is allowing migrants who are under 18 years old and cross by themselves to remain in the country while the government decides whether they have a legal claim to residency, either under asylum law or for some other reason. Mayorkas noted that 80% of the minors, most of whom are from the three Northern Triangle countries of Central America, have relatives in the U.S. and 40% have a parent. “These are children being reunited with their families who will care for them,” he said.

The Biden administration last week ended a Trump policy that made relatives reluctant to contact HHS to retrieve children for fear of being deported themselves. Besides setting up new temporary facilities to house migrant children, it is also backing aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to try to stem the flow of migrants at the source. Mayorkas took swipes at the previous administration for dismantling an asylum system that would have enabled a more “orderly” immigration system, cutting aid to Central America and failing to vaccinate Border Patrol agents.

Also, he said the Biden administration is working to make the asylum process shorter and to make it possible to petition from an applicant’s home country rather than make a dangerous and uncertain journey. “We have no illusions about how hard it is,” he said, “and we know it will take time.”

BEN FOX and ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press

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