- Right now Tucson Sector is experiencing
an incredible flow of cross-border traffic,
they had the vast majority of which is single adults
that 85% of what we deal with is single adults,
since the beginning of this fiscal year,
we've had about a hundred thousand encounters
of people coming across the border
and that's all demographics.
That's single adults, that's unaccompanied children.
I think one of our biggest concerns right now
is the unaccompanied children.
We've had well over 9,000 so far
and that makes this year fiscal year 21
the record for Tucson Sector
as far as the unaccompanied children crossing the border.
- What has changed that suddenly
so many children crossing the border into Arizona?
- Well, from what we can gather based
on post arrest interviews,
it seems as though there's a majority
of people that are crossing that have the perception
that our laws changed with the change in administration.
Obviously they have not, the border is still closed,
we're still enforcing the same laws that we always have
but the perception has changed.
- In many cases, we see things like large groups
very north of the border,
people in the back of trunks or squashed into vehicles,
how does it happen that they're able to cross the border
and make their way so far Modlin?
- So, what you're saying is we are seeing some large groups
like you're talking about
but the large groups basically give up right on the border.
They cross the border and just turn themselves
into the first border patrol agent that they see.
And you see that a lot in other places in Rio Grande Valley,
in Del Rio, Texas,
we don't see that very much here.
That's a very small percentage of what we're dealing with.
The vast majority of the people that cross here
are doing everything they can to avoid apprehension.
So they're actively evading apprehension,
you've probably seen, we released a lot
of photographs through social media.
The vast majority are wearing camouflage
from head to toe and moving in very small groups
generally in groups of one or two in order
to try to task saturate our ability
to apprehend them.
- Can you put tasks saturate
into layman's terms for someone like myself?
- Yes, what I just mean is that there's a finite number
of border patrol agents out there.
And if there's a group of a hundred
that are giving themselves up,
then one or two agents can potentially deal
with that group and get that group onto transport
and get them back to our facilities
and get them processed.
It also takes a single agent
to apprehend a single person out there.
So, it's just numbers.
If we have X number of agents in the field,
X number of people cross individually,
then it takes that many agents
to apprehend that many people.
Some of the photos that I've seen have been in areas
that the agency refers to as the West Desert
for example the AutoNation.
How is it that groups are able to cross there so easily?
- Yeah, well they're south of the nation.
There is no, or there's very limited infrastructure
border infrastructure.
So a lot of it is what we refer to as Normandy barrier
basically, it's sort of a K rail that's built
to design vehicles or built to prevent vehicles
from crossing the border.
People can just step over it or go right under it.
- Further, east for example in Cochise County
I've had ranchers who tell me that the construction stopped
and that there are actual groups
of people who will just funnel through that.
Is that what you've seen?
- [John] Yes.
- What becomes of those areas?
Can you put additional manpower temporarily?
- Yeah, so that's exactly what we do.
We try to address those issues with personnel,
with technology.
- Have there been instances where you see children
in some of these very remote and treacherous terrains?
- So fortunately children, not so much.
Most of the children are giving themselves up
as soon as they cross the border now
and anywhere out there is treacherous.
This is of all of all the border I've worked in,
I've been in the agency more than 25 years,
I've never seen more dangerous places than we have out here.
- According to the Pima County medical examiners office,
last year, 220 sets of human remains
were recovered in Pima,
Santa Cruz and Cochise Counties.
A 62% increase compared to 2019
the medical examiner's report cited record heat
and drought as factors.
In addition to increased apprehensions,
modeling also says his agents
are seizing more hard drugs along the border.
Traditionally, the hard narcotics
have gone through ports of entry for example,
but you're saying that field agents are serious.
- Yes, so we are seeing an increase in hard narcotics,
probably about at least an 80% increase
from where we were last year this time in hard narcotics,
mostly fentanyl.
And you know, it's certainly with the costs obviously
there's a lot of profit to be made
in hard narcotics and much easier to transport then
than the old days of 50 pounds of marijuana strapped
to someone's back much easier
to put a couple of kilos of fentanyl
or methamphetamine in a backpack and cross that way.
- Because you've been in the agency for 25 plus years.
What are you seeing differently from the smugglers?
They're charging more,
they're making better promises?
- Yeah, so I think that the smugglers are charging more.
I think that the other thing that we're seeing
is the introduction much more
of a technology with the smuggling.
You know, there's been some very high profile cases
of people that came into this area
to smuggle migrants out of the area and were recruited
through social media applications, things like that.
And then even the migrants
that are crossing the border using GPS
and cell phone technology to aid that trip,
that is something that we haven't experienced before.
- You have that situational awareness yet
somehow people are able to get past.
- Yes, absolutely.
I mean, what we're not doing is standing
on the border shoulder to shoulder,
stopping with the ability to stop everything that crosses.
The people that are smuggling migrants
across the border have spent years doing this.
They spend all day watching us
and determining where to move people across the border.
- And when you've got something like 90,000 square miles
it's going to happen that someone gets through.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- All right, Chief Modlin thank you.
- Thank you.