Migrant smugglers have moved to more remote locations for guiding migrants across the border, the Wall Street Journal reports. This has challenged immigration officials who lack the ability to handle huge numbers of people. More than 50 migrants—including women and children from countries including Kenya, Senegal, Colombia and Guinea—were walking along the border east of Lukeville, Ariz., on Friday, saying they had been guided by smugglers to a hole in the 30-foot-high steel post wall. Border Patrol agents on site were already busy taking into custody 100 other migrants who had arrived earlier in the day, so other agents used cameras to monitor the new arrivals as they trekked to a staging area a few miles away. Agents are driving newly arrived migrants to the nearby Ajo Border Patrol Station in Arizona.
It also prompted Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, to sign an executive order Friday to deploy state National Guard troops to the border to aid federal authorities. Separately, the Journal reports Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Monday that enables the state to arrest and possibly deport migrants, initiating conflict with the federal government over U.S. border authority. The measure makes it a state crime for anyone without authorization to be in the U.S. to cross into Texas outside of a designated port of entry. U.S. officials have reported averaging more than 7,000 arrests a day recently along the Southwest border, with some of the largest surges appearing in remote Arizona and California, as the number of people crossing into the U.S. and requesting asylum continues to hover near record levels.
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