EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – It’s not unusual for U.S. border officers to walk groups of 30 to 40 migrants back to Mexico over the Paso del Norte international bridge. It happens every day.
Sometimes, two groups are sent over – one in the early morning and one in the afternoon. Most deportees in the past few months have been Mexican citizens promptly released by their country’s authorities upon arrival, Border Report has documented.
On Wednesday night, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection handed Mexican officials a group of about 90 individuals in the middle of the bridge. Many carried a removal notice. Some told Border Report news partner ProVideo as they walked by they were citizens of Ecuador and El Salvador who had been held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Otero County, New Mexico.
Reporters witnessed as agents with Mexico’s National Migration Institute allowed several young Mexican males to walk away.
Third-country migrants were placed in white vans officials said were headed to the Leona Vicario federal shelter in central Juarez. Mexican National Guard troops supervised the transfer.
Border Report reached out to ICE for confirmation on the removals from Otero and is awaiting a response.
Earlier in day, Juan Francisco Gim, the mayor of Nogales, Sonora, told reporters that U.S. authorities have been removing around 100 migrants per day from Nogales, Arizona, almost all of them Mexican citizens.
Gim told ProyectoPuente.com and Milenio his city is yet to see the “mass deportations” promised by U.S. President Donald Trump, but is preparing just in case.
“The federal, state and municipal government organized ourselves to be prepared for the threat and imminence of these deportations,” Gim told reporters. “We have three temporary shelters, one in sports fields with a 500-person capacity, another is a factory with similar capacity and one more in progress for 300 people. A federal and state facility under construction will give us a total capacity of 3,000.”
Gim urged border residents not to panic and trust in their authorities’ ability to handle a potential north-to-south migrant surge.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum earlier said her government is building nine large migrant reception centers in Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas to handle possible mass deportations.
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