Pence says on the Arizona border that immigrant families will not be separated

Pence says on the Arizona border that immigrant families will not be separated



During a tour of the border wall in the city of Nogales (Arizona), the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, said on Thursday that immigrant families will not be separated and asked Congress to end what he called "failures" of the asylum law

"President Trump has made it very clear that we are not considering restoring the separation of families, what we want is for Congress to act," said Pence.

"There is no doubt that there are people suffering on both sides of the border, however, the human traffickers and drug traffickers are taking advantage of these failures within our legal system to exploit families that come from Central America," added the country's vice president.

Pence, who toured part of the border wall with the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, said that the country does not face an immigration "crisis" but a "national security crisis" and thanked the daily work done by the agents of the Border Patrol.

"We know that the border wall works, thousands of people are crossing the border, our system is not designed to handle this huge flow of people," he said.

The politician indicated that, just last Tuesday, the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) arrested 4,300 migrants in the southern line, the largest number of detainees in a single day in the history of this federal agency

"We are here calling on Congress to end these failures within our asylum system and allow us to return people who are detained to their countries in Central America, in the same way that we currently do with the people of Mexico." , clarified Pence.

According to the statement made by the top leader, the goal is to end once and for all with the practice of "catch and release" (catch and release).

Pence said that traffickers are currently taking advantage of the flaws in the system that allow migrants seeking asylum to "disappear" within the country.

As revealed by CBP this week, the arrests of migrants on the border with Mexico exceeded the monthly records of the last five years in March.

Official figures show that last March 92,607 arrests were registered along the border, of which 30,555 corresponded to individuals, 53,077 to families and 8,975 to unaccompanied minors.

In Arizona, the largest undocumented crossing point is the Yuma Sector.

Pence praised Trump's efforts to build the promised border wall with Mexico and gave Nogales an example, since, he said, this city was the epicenter of the migration crossing a decade ago.

For his part, Roy Villareal, head of the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, explained to the vice president how they are working at their maximum capacity and showed him photographs of some of the large groups of migrants detained frequently at the border.

He also exhibited the ingenious "tricks" that drug dealers use, such as tying pieces of carpet in their shoes to mask their footprints in the desert.

Several members of the Border Patrol Victims group showed up outside the security guard station in Nogales to protest Pence's visit.

They arrived with photographs of immigrants who have died at the hands of border agents.

At the end of March, President Trump announced the cut of financial aid to the Central American countries that make up the so-called Northern Triangle, which includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The Government considers that these countries "do nothing" to prevent migrants from traveling in caravans to the United States.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Hondurans, mostly young men and women, with many children, continue on Thursday leaving their country in a fourth caravan, with the idea of ​​reaching the United States and the hope of ending the situation of unemployment and insecurity who suffer in their country.

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