SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — As the Border Patrol continues releasing asylum-seekers and dropping them off by the busload at transit centers around San Diego, some of the migrants are reporting they crossed the border on their own without having to hire a smuggler.
Damian Hernandez, of Guatemala, said he heard others were paying up to $700 for help from smugglers to get over the barrier, and that’s why he chose to venture off on his own to the hills east of Tijuana.
“I found a spot along the metal wall and climbed over it,” Hernandez said in Spanish. “I didn’t need a smuggler.”
The Guatemalan national said after getting onto U.S. soil, he walked for an hour or so until he found Border Patrol agents who took him into custody.
“It wasn’t that hard,” he said.
Hernandez told Border Report he is on his way to New York City to start a new life.
“I had a business but a cartel started demanding money and threatening to kill me,” he said.
He said he left Guatemala last week and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on Saturday.
Other migrants also described crossing without the need for a smuggler.
“Didn’t use one, it was just me,” Miguel Benavides, who is from Colombia, said in Spanish.
Benavides said many other asylum-seekers at the processing center where he was taken were talking about making it north of the border without a “coyote,” as smugglers are commonly referred to by migrants.
“There was no need,” said Benavides. “I just used a tree next to the wall and used it to climb over the barrier, that’s it.”
Benavides is headed for Denver.
When asked how long it took to get processed after he was apprehended, he said it took about 30 hours to get processed and driven to the Iris Avenue trolley station in San Diego.
Since Friday, according to San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, 3,400 asylum-seekers have been dropped off at transit centers around San Diego.
Neither the Border Patrol nor the Department of Homeland Security have made the numbers public.
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