I would say there's three crises occurring right now.
There's an operational crisis,
there's a humanitarian crisis,
and there's a policy crisis.
If you look at the numbers from March,
there was over 100,000 people that came across the borders.
Roughly 53,000 of those individuals were family units,
and 39,000 were children.
So it's truly unprecedented the numbers
that we're seeing come across.
Narrator: The United States Border Patrol
has long been under scrutiny due to allegations
of mistreatment toward migrants at the border.
We spent a day at the US-Mexico border
with the Border Patrol, and this is what we saw.
Tessa: So this is one of the boundaries,
like, this building is in Mexico.
Man: OK.
Narrator: On a hot Saturday afternoon in April,
US Border Patrol agent Tessa Reyes
gave us a tour of the border in El Paso
and the surrounding area where immigrants seeking asylum
turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents
posted at the crossing sites.
So right now we're on the border,
kind of in the tristate area.
We've got New Mexico right here,
we've got Texas right here, and then we have
right behind us is Mexico.
There's no fence out here. There's no barriers of any kind.
And you guys will see. We've had a lot of crossings.
This is a very, very busy area.
This is one of the areas where we're,
we're having a lot of trouble
keeping up with the demand.
So this is Mexico,
and we have the municipal police.
Every now and then, you know, they'll
kinda help us out or whatever.
But for the most part, we stay over here,
and they stay over there.
Interviewer: So who are these folks
over here under the trees?
Tessa: Uh, these look like a group
either waiting to cross, or they might be waiting
for another part of their group.
They might be waiting for
more people to come.
So that's why we have this agent out here.
He's kinda just waiting.
We usually try to have one here at all times
just because it is such a busy area
and, you know, you never know what's gonna happen.
So he's kind of just reactive to whatever's going on,
and he can call for transport if the group
does come or when they come across.
Kids are especially a vulnerable group,
and we try our darnedest to process them
and get them where they need to be.
We're trying to keep everyone together.
No separations, you know,
obviously, kids are the priority and women as well.
We're just trying to expedite the process a little more
because we're overrun.
Interviewer: How stretched is Border Patrol right now
in terms of the volume that you guys are seeing?
The El Paso Sector is probably stretched
more than it's ever been in easily the last...
I mean, I've been here 10 years, and I've never seen this.
Roughly 40% of the agents' times are spent
on duties other than their law-enforcement mission,
what they signed up to do.
Processing, transporting people
to the Border Patrol stations
or to the hospitals.
Lots of compassion that is occurring along the border,
especially with the Border Patrol agents,
but that is not why they signed up
to be Border Patrol agents.
Narrator: Due to the volume of crossings,
the Department of Homeland Security shut down
all six federal-inspection stations
in the El Paso Sector.
Normally, all vehicles would be required
to pull into checkpoints like this one.
I always thought that the checkpoints
we're kind of untouchable, and the fact that
we can't afford to man these
is just really just insane.
It's really just overwhelmed us.
There's far less agents that are on the line
that are doing actual enforcement.
Actually, we can go through here.
Oh, here we got some guys.
So you had a group of 23, and then they took 'em,
and this is what's left?
Man: Yeah.
Tessa: OK,
10-four.
All right then, man, we just wanted to check,
see if you're OK.
Yeah, no, I'm good.
OK. Just waiting for transport.
All right.
All right, take it easy.
All right.
As you can see, there's
mostly children. We have an infant.
So that's another layer of the care
that we have to go through.
You know, diapers, formula, all that kind of stuff.
They're each gonna get medically screened and, uh,
hopefully go through the process as soon as possible.
Um, this is one of the areas that they
turn themselves in a lot to.
Yo.
What's going on?
He's directing them to keep going that way
'cause we have another agent I guess over there.
Interviewer: What'd they say?
These guys are from Honduras, or Guatemala,
and then they're from El Salvador.
Interviewer: So what's gonna happen to these folks?
So now these, they're gonna be taken to processing,
which is not very far.
They enter through right here.
It's the end of the fence.
There's a break in the fence
right here, and they can just walk up,
and there's always an agent here.
Two of 'em have a bit of a cough,
so everyone's gonna need to be screened,
and then we try as quickly as we can
to process for asylum.
When they get the bus out here,
they'll take 'em to one of our processing centers,
more than likely PDT, which is right here.
So this is a good area for them to come
because processing is right here,
you know?
Narrator: This is as close as we were able to get
to the processing center.
Border Patrol would not allow us to film inside.
At the end of last year, we had two children
that died in our custody,
and so I would say the No. 1 thing
that keeps me up at night
is to ensure that another child
does not die in our custody.
I have seen more compassion from the US Border Patrol,
the men and women of the Border Patrol,
than I have seen in any other job
that I have had the privilege of occupying.
It's just the huge influx of people
that are coming across.
Very difficult for the Border Patrol to deal with.
Narrator: The day after this interview was taped,
a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy died in a Texas hospital.
After initially being detained by the Border Patrol,
the boy was transferred to the custody
of a government-contracted shelter
before being sent to a hospital in Brownsville
where he died due to what the
Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs described
as a severe infection in the frontal lobe,
becoming the third child since December 2018
to die after being detained.