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Excerpted from Ty McCormicks Beyond the Sand and Sea: One Familys Quest for a Country to Call Home, published by St. Martins Press.

The sand burned hot on Bekars feet as he lingered in the backfield. Dusk had fallen over the barren soccer pitch in Dadaab refugee camp, near Kenyas border with Somalia, but the heat was still oppressive. It radiated up from the grassless earth and hung thick in the air so that even shallow breaths threatened to overwhelm his lungs. From his position at center back, he kept the entire game in view, jogging forward when his teammates possessed the ball and falling back when they turned it over. Up two goals over rival club Al-Ahly, which drew its members from a section of the camp called Ifo, Bekar should have felt enthused. Instead, he was sick with worry.

Bekars family had arrived in Dadaab nearly five years earlier, after fleeing the war in neighboring Somalia. They had watched the sprawling desert camp swell into the largest in the world, housing more than half a million people by 2011. A vast expanse of sand and thorn scrub and flimsy makeshift dwellings, the settlement was both a refuge and a prison: Its residents were forbidden to leave the camp or seek gainful employment in Kenya. Most survived on monthly rations from the United Nationsa few kilos of sorghum and maize, salt, and some cooking oil.

Bekar had enrolled in school in the camp in the hopes of winning a scholarship to study in Canada, but the rest of his family struggled to adapt to their new home. Two of Bekars half brothers, Abdirashid and Abdifata, had wives and children back in Somalia. They didnt have the option of going to school, and their chances of finding informal work in the camp were slim. Their debt and anxiety mounting, they had begun to whisper about tahrib.

It was a word Bekar had heard often growing up, one that carried both the promise of fortune and the fear of death. An Arabic word that was traditionally used to describe the smuggling of illegal goods, tahrib in the Somali context had come to mean migration in search of work, usually without papers and usually to Europe or to the oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf. Young men were said to go on tahrib, and they went in large numbers. The more desperate you were, the more likely you were to try your luck abroad, knowing full well you might never come home.

In Dadaab, there were thousands of desperate people, and a thriving network of smugglers who could navigate the treacherous journey from Kenya, through South Sudan, Sudan, and Libya, across the Mediterranean to Italy. On the day Bekars half brothers, Abdirashid and Abdifata, had said their goodbyes, his third half brother Zakariya also disappeared. He hadnt come home at sundown, and he hadnt turned up the next day. Unlike his two older brothers, he hadnt breathed a word about tahrib. But after a week had passed, no one doubted where he had gone.

Foreign troops only accelerated Somalias slide intochaos.

His departure had come as a shock to Bekar, who had been closest with Zakariya. Hes my brother. How could he keep this one from me? Bekar thought. Unlike Abdirashid and Abdifata, Zakariya wasnt married. Perhaps he thought his mother would forbid him from going with his brothers, since he didnt have a family to support. The unanswered questions gnawed at Bekar. He wondered if he should have said something, raised the subject directly with Zakariya during the period his other half-brothers had been discussing it. Now Zakariya was probably hundreds of miles away, packed in a crowded truck or stuck in a migrant ghetto.

Bekar had tried his best to keep his mind on other things. In the past week alone, he had done hours of algebraic equations, working his way through a thick red textbook he shared with a friend from school, a Somali refugee like him named Asad. During earlier periods of instability, he had found that the concentration required for mathematics had a steadying effect. Soccer offered another diversion. The match against Al-Ahly, he had hoped, would put his mind at ease at least for a few hours. But out on the pitch in the waning daylight hours, he felt himself transported across the desert to Sudan and Libya. The place he imagined was hot and harsh, even more desolate than Dadaab. It was teeming with the kinds of hazards he had heard awaited those who went on tahribwild animals, corrupt border agents, ruthless traffickers. He wondered whether Zakariya and the others could survive such a place.

Bekar was no stranger to uncertainty. He was born in 1991, the year Siad Barres dictatorship collapsed after more than 20 years, plunging his country into war and famine. He was less than a week old when his father died of a mysterious fever. While he lived with his mother, his fathers other widow, and his 17 siblings in a squat four-bedroom house in Mogadishu, dueling warlords carved up the capital around them, laying much of it to waste and killing thousands of people. Fighters wheeled through the streets in pickup trucks outfitted with heavy machine guns, looting stores and homes and clashing among themselves. Food stocks dwindled and prices soared. Soon, thousands of people were starving across the country.

Aid workers tried to provide emergency relief to the sick and the hungry, but militants shook them down for cash and stole their supplies. U.N. peacekeepers eventually arrived, including thousands of American troops deployed as part of Operation Restore Hope. But the foreign troops only accelerated Somalias slide into chaos. When Bekar was 2 years old, U.S. forces attempted to capture warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, triggering a two-day battle that ended with two Black Hawk helicopters downed and hundreds of Somalis and 18 Americans dead. At the time, Bekars family lived just a few blocks from Bakaara Market in Mogadishus Black Sea district, where one of the U.S. choppers had crashed and where the family ran a small shop selling cement and other construction wares. The market was the site of frequent skirmishes when Bekar was growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as warlords fought one another and against militias allied to a new movement of Islamic courtsgroups of Muslim legal scholars that had the backing of the business communitythat was gradually gaining sway.

Bekar managed to avoid most of the violence. But one day in early 2006, when he was 13 years old, he was at school, when the teachers abruptly dismissed the class. Rumors had circulated that fighting was about to break out between militiamen of the Islamic courts and one of the last remaining warlords. He thought about looking for his half sister Sadia, who was studying at the same school, but as his classmates rushed past him for the door he decided there wasnt time. Bekar darted out into the street, zigzagging through the maze of narrow alleyways that led toward Bakaara Market. But everywhere he turned, roadblocks manned by clan militias had suddenly appeared, and he knew better than to cross them. Heart racing, he backtracked and tried several alternate routes, crisscrossing the city in search of a safe path home. Eventually, he succeeded in making a wide berth around the fighting and circling back from the rear. When he burst through the door into the cool of the sitting room, his mother, Khadija, and his late fathers second wife, Raaliyo, were both frantic.

Where is your sister? they wanted to know. Why isnt she with you?

Raaliyos face was stricken with worry, and her dark eyes searched his for answers. Bekar stood there speechless. There was nothing he could say to assuage her fear, no way to explain why he had reacted as he did. Before he could open his mouth, the door burst open a second time and in tumbled Sadia with one of her school friends. Raaliyos face melted as she swept Sadia up in her arms.

Not long after that, a federation of Islamic courts finally imposed order on the wrecked capital city. They were backed by powerful clan militias and ruled by a harsh version of Islamic law. They banned pornography and music and even declared it a crime to watch soccer, forcing Bekar and his friends to listen to the 2006 World Cup matches on the BBCs Somali radio service. Thieves started having their hands amputated and women began to veil themselves in the style of more conservative Muslim societies. But the killing and the looting stopped, and for that most people were grateful. For the first time in more than a decade, the roads were clear of checkpoints. Commerce gradually resumed. It was among the only periods of sustained normalcy Bekar can remember, a time when he and his sisters walked to and from school without worry and the shop in Bakaara Market did well enough to put plenty of food on the table.

But the Islamic Courts Union had powerful enemies. Neighboring Ethiopia viewed it as a threat, as did the United States, which in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was eager to prevent Somalia from becoming a terrorist haven. In December 2006, the George W. Bush administration supported an Ethiopian invasion aimed at toppling the courts and installing a more pliant, international-backed government. Thousands of Ethiopian troops marched on Mogadishu, backed by Russian-made tanks and fighter jets. They made quick work of the Islamic Courts militiamen, and within a few weeks they had taken control of the capital. Thousands of refugees streamed out of the city, headed for Ethiopia and Kenya.

Bekars family had anticipated the devastation of the Ethiopian blitzkrieg and fled to Kenya in an earlier wave, escaping the city before it became an inferno and settling in Dadaab. As he adjusted to life in the camp, Bekar mostly stuck together with his siblings. He was closest with Zakariya, who was two years his senior. They were practically inseparable, joining soccer matches whenever they could and playing cards together late into the evenings. But as the months passed and Bekar began to internalize the strange rhythms of Dadaab, he found himself drawn to one of his new classmates in school, a quiet boy named Asad.

His new friend had been born in the camp and had never left its confines. He had never seen a two-story building, never walked on a paved road. But Bekar could sense in Asad the same drive to escape his circumstances that was beginning to develop in him. Life had never been easy in Mogadishu, but here it was hard in ways he hadnt previously imagined: the total dependence on others, the interminable waiting for everything. People lived as if they were saving a part of themselves for their real lives, which would presumably begin as soon as the war ended in Somalia or they were granted asylum in the United States. There were still weddings and births and funerals. People still laughed and loved and bickered. But to him, everything seemed halfhearted, diminished out of some shared subconscious need for self-preservation.

Asad didnt appear to live that way. He had thrown himself into his studies, grabbing tight to the one possibility without clear limits and using it to launch himself toward a future that, while still uncertain, had to be better than this. Bekar was determined to do the same, and their budding friendship revolved almost entirely around that shared goal. In fact, we had one ambition. Our target was just to finish primary school and get good marks and then go to secondary school, Bekar recalled. And once we got to secondary school, we had one target againa scholarship to study abroad in Canada. Because when people stay here in Dadaab, when they finish school, we could see they had nothing to do. We decided, let us do something different from these other people.

People lived as if they were saving a part of themselves for their real lives, which would presumably begin as soon as the war ended in Somalia or they were granted asylum in the UnitedStates.

Bekars older siblings had taken the flight from Mogadishu even harder than he had. There were odd jobs to be done in the camprunning deliveries, cleaning shops, digging pit latrines. But even the worst of these jobs were hard to get without clan or familial connections, and the line to fill them was long. Even harder to get were the incentive worker jobs at the international aid agencies and the U.N. Those were virtually monopolized by the powerful clans.

Time and again Abdirashid and Abdifata failed in their efforts to find work. In the meantime, the calls from family back home grew more and more urgent. The Ethiopian invasion had shattered the fragile peace that took hold under the Islamic Courts Union and ignited a new insurgencythis one led by a militant wing of the ICU calling itself Al-Shabab, or the Youth. Al-Shabab targeted Ethiopian troops with suicide bombers and assassinations, turning Mogadishu into a war zone once again. They also press-ganged young men into service as fighters and religious police, enforcing an even stricter religious code than the ICUs. Soon the group controlled the bulk of southern Somalia and all but a few square blocks of the capital city, where the embattled transitional government was hunkered down. Al-Shababs fighters were ruthless, and their tacticsincluding blocking foreign shipments of emergency aidhelped fuel the famine that by 2011 was forcing thousands of new refugees to flee to Dadaab.

Abdirashid and Abdifata were running out of options. Al-Shabab had begun to terrorize Dadaab as well, forcing many of the big aid agencies to scale back or pull out. As a result, the brothers chances of finding work were growing slimmer by the day. And so Abdirashid and Abdifata talked their plan over with the family. They said, Instead of staying here not doing anything, let us go on tahrib. We either die or we get something, Bekar remembered. Khadija and Raaliyothe two moms, as Bekar called themlistened quietly as his half brothers made their case. Neither woman tried to dissuade them. With no good options, there was hardly a counterargument to be made. But he could tell they were worried, that they were holding something back when at last they nodded and said, All the best.

Bekar had resigned himself to the loss of two of his half brothers. He understood why they were willing to risk everything to provide for their families. But why Zakariya had gone with themthat he couldnt fathom. Just the other week, the two of them had watched Manchester United play at the cinema in the main market in Ifo, an improvised establishment that consisted of a projector and an old sheet housed under a rusty tin roof. Afterward, they had hoofed it back home in the dark, half giddy, half scared, when a hyena emerged from the shadows, its eyes glowing green in the night.

Now instead of laughing, Bekar imagined Zakariya weak with exhaustion in the desert. Bekars anxiety mounted with each passing day, pooling in the space between his ribs where his appetite had once been. He could see that the two moms were also worried. They whispered to each other more than usual, and they said little to anyone else. Every once in a while, Raaliyo would check her mobile phone, thumbing the translucent rubber keys to light up the small yellow screen. He recognized the look on her face each time she did it. He had seen it before, on the day Mogadishu had erupted with violence and he had run home without his half sister Sadia.

Six weeks after Zakariya disappeared, Raaliyos phone finally rang. All three brothers had made it safely to Europe, three of roughly 62,000 migrants whose arrival in Italy by sea that year would coincide with the first wave of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. It was an early harbinger of the coming crisis in the Mediterranean, unleashed by the collapse of strongman regimes across the Middle East and made more dangerous by the fortress mentality of many European countries. As record numbers claimed asylum on the continent, the European Union scrambled to secure its borders, shoring up remaining dictatorships like Sudan and Ethiopia with aid in exchange for promises to crack down on human smugglers and earmarking billions for development under the theory that it would deter migration. Little distinction was made between economic migrants and refugees. The goal was to stanch the flow.

In Dadaab, people measured the crisis not by numbers of refugees or even deaths at sea, but by the silent disappearance of loved ones. Friends would simply stop showing up for school. Neighbors would vanish without a trace. But as the years wore on and more and more of their journeys were documented on social media, it became clear just how lucky Zakariya and his brothers had been. Everyone had seen the videos, posted to Facebook and shared on WhatsApp, of shackled migrants, often bruised and bleeding, pleading for relatives to send money to their torturersoften the very smugglers they had paid for safe passage. Evidence of extortion and even slavery was everywhere, but still more people decided to go. Either we die, or we get something, they must have thought. Bekar never considered going on tahrib, but he didnt disagree with the logic.

By Ty McCormick. St. Martins Press.

Read more from the original source:
The Day Bekars Brothers Disappeared - Slate

Driven out of their home countries by unlivable and deadly conditions immigrants make the decision to undertake the dangerous journey north to the U.S.border in hopes of survival for themselves and their families. | Dario Lopez-Mills/AP

Much ink and hot air have been expended over the past several weeks about whether or not there is a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, caused by a big spike in the number of migrants and asylum-seekers arriving there since the change in U.S. administrations.

The tone of the Republican versus Democrat argument often takes on a semantic character. In the opinion of this writer, there is indeed a major crisis, but it is not new; rather it is rooted in the way U.S. imperialism has interacted with the nations and peoples of Central America and the Caribbean for well over a century.

It is not so much a crisis for the United States or even for the population of the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. It is, however, an enormous crisis, involving massive poverty, suffering, and death, for millions of people in the countries from which the migrants and refugees, both young and old, are arriving. And the actions of the U.S. ruling class and state over many years are at the root of this crisis.

The root? Lip service is now being paid to this phrase: Weve got to get to the root of the problem which is in the Northern Triangle Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. But the solutions cannot be blocking the arrival of migrants and refugees while subsidizing the governments of those countries in a way that does not improve the economic and personal security of their inhabitants.

Does the Biden administration, and do the Republicans, really understand what is the root of the problem in those countries, and in others such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc.? I suspect they have more than just an inkling, but do not want the U.S. public to understand the historical events that have brought so many people to such a desperate pass that they see no other option than to uproot themselves, often put themselves in the hands of smugglers and make a run to the Mexico-U.S. border where they have to brave more danger and humiliationall with a faint hope of reaching safety on the U.S. side.

The history of U.S. relations with the poorer countries of Central America and the Caribbean has to be studied to get a real understanding of the roots of the present situation.

The Monroe Doctrine, and especially the 1905 Roosevelt Corollary, established the idea that the United States reserves the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean when the situation in those countries affects U.S. interests. By U.S. interests is meant, of course, not the interests of ordinary working-class people in the U.S. but of the corporate elites.

Occasionally, people close to U.S. power centers are willing to recognize this publically. In 1935, U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler, who had participated in many U.S. overseas military interventions from China to Mexico to Haiti and more, shocked the countrys political, economic, and military leadership with his book War is a Racket. In this book, he scathingly compared the actions of the United States in the poorer countries of the world with those of Al Capone and his gangsters in Chicago. Only, he said, the U.S. military had by far outdone Capone in the multi-continental reach of its buccaneering expeditions which benefited only the wealthy capitalists in this country.

Have not been shy

Successive U.S. administrations have not been shy about intervening to change governments in the Western Hemisphere and beyond to suit U.S. business and geopolitical interests. This has gone on almost nonstop for more than a century. In the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century, U.S. forces were fighting and occupying one Central American country after another, not to mention also Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. U.S. intervention in Haiti, which had a definite racist edge to it, was particularly bloody. In 1919, to crush a Haitian rebellion against U.S. military occupation, U.S. troops treacherously ambushed and murdered Haitian patriot leader Charlemagne Pralte and distributed gruesome photos of his corpse, to send a message that resistance to the United States was futile. Pralte had fought for friendship and unity between the peoples of Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic, another of his sins. The leaders of the United States much preferred people like Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ordered the massacre of Haitian migrant workers in his country.

The U.S. intervened in Guatemala in 1954 to overthrow the moderately left of center government of President Jacobo Arbenz, who was seen as soft on communism and a threat to the profits of the United Fruit Company, which had connections within the Eisenhower administration. This led to many decades of barbaric repression in Guatemala, leading to several hundred thousands of deaths. The efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, combat the left in El Salvador, overthrow the government of Haiti in 2004, were only a few examples of U.S. imperialisms overthrow and regime change efforts in Latin America in relatively recent times.

The U.S. connived in the overthrow of the moderately progressive government of Honduras in 2009. The result of that interference was the coming to power of two successive corrupt, right-wing governments, of Porfirio Lobo first and also of the present president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, both of whom have been accused of being up to their necks in corrupt relations with the drug cartels. The combination of corrupt, undemocratic, and repressive governments with the growth of the drug cartels (many of whose customers are in the United States) is a major factor in destabilization and violence in the Central American countries, and thus of the flight of thousands of people.

Working through these compliant, corrupt regimes, the U.S. has foisted on the nations of the area the Central America/Dominican Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) which like all such agreements, favors the wealthy foreign corporations and stunts the economies of the poorer nations.

On top of this, the Central American area has been hard hit by the results of global warming. This has manifested itself in very destructive hurricanes over the past several years, but also in a long term drought situation over wide swaths of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvadora drought which has ruined crops for several seasons in a row, and given the rural population little choice but to uproot themselves and hit the migrant trail. This global warming is also the result of the current capitalist mode of production.

Thus U.S. government policy and the actions of U.S. based transnational capital, in combination with U.S. allied local ruling classes, have created a situation of economic and personal insecurity which is the driving force of the current migration. This is attested to by many, many interviews with migrants by charitable and human rights activists, as well as journalists of several orientations.

This is the real crisis and a dire one it is indeed. Neither the Biden administration nor the Republican opposition seems willing currently to recognize its real roots in the economics and geopolitics of imperialism. If that is the case, the solutions being proposed will not work.

This is revealed by the idea that what needs to be done to get to the root of the problem, in the countries of origin of the migrants and refugees, is to pour more U.S. money into the utterly corrupt and undemocratic regimes of the Northern Tier countries. This seems especially incongruous as the U.S. government is moving toward possible indictment of Honduran President Juan OrlandoHernndez for being a close ally of the same drug cartels who make life a living hell for so many of his own countrymen and women.

In Honduras, Guatemala, and also Haiti there have been frequent, huge grassroots mobilizations against the corrupt governments in power. But the United States so far continues to see the governments against whom the peoples are fighting as its key allies against Venezuela and Cuba.

We in the CPUSA and the peoples movement in the United States have to speak out strongly against this century-old imperialist policy, and demand changes that will include the recognition of the sovereign rights of the peoples and nations of the hemisphere to run their own governments without threats of destabilization and overthrow. Moreover, we need to oppose neoliberal trade policies and greatly step up the fight against global warming, for the good of workers in poor countries and in the United States too.

We must make sure that the citizens and voters in the U.S. are aware of the degree to which our own leaders, political and economic, have created this multinational crisis, and the steps needed to change these policies. Until then, migrants and refugees will continue to come and should be welcomed and supported in every way.

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There is a migrant crisis, but where and why? - People's World

Sanwar Ali: additional reporting and commentsThe so-called US immigration crisis at the southern border with Mexico has apparently sparked a rise in the number of Russian, Iraqi and Syrian nationals heading to the Central American nation to cross into the US. According to a Daily Mail report, the number of people from Russia and the Middle East crossing the Mexico border is increasing at an alarming rate.Epimonia has detailed information on what causes refugeecrises and otherreasons why people may wish to flee their country. Reasons given include persecution, war, hunger, climate change, poverty, etc. Perhaps more needs to be done on an international level to try and preventrefugeecrises.

According to official data, US President Joe Biden is spending approximately $3 million a day to accommodate migrants at a US immigration detention facility in Texas. An official at the facility has claimed that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are being forced to catch and release illegal immigrants without vetting them.

The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley is currently housing about 1,500 migrants at a cost of approximately $2,000 per person per day, according to The Daily Mail report. The facility is the largest US immigration detention center in America, with a capacity of 2,400. It was originally designed to house mainly women and children.

Its understood that Russian and Middle Eastern migrants at the border are becoming increasingly common, having joined the caravan from Mexico thats crossing into the United States, with Mexicans and people from other Central American nations also heading to the border.

However, the whistleblowing official, who asked to remain anonymous said that the facility in Texas has become nothing more than a catch and release center for illegal immigrant families, including men. Most are being welcomed into the US after three days to await immigration court dates.

The anonymous official said: Its nothing more than catch and release. Before President Biden took over we had about 20 families a day arrive at our facility, now we are seeing more than 150 a day, we are overwhelmed. Before, we never accepted men at our facility, but now we are.

The inside source added that immigrants are arriving from all over the world, saying: We used to get immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but in the last few months weve had immigrants from Russia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, Romania and Haiti.

According to the official, migrant families would often remain at the Texas facility for months at a time while awaiting an outcome on their asylum cases. However, the maximum time they were held amid the so-called border crisis is three days.

This has sparked several national security concerns, with immigration officials unable to properly screen migrants before releasing them.

The unnamed official said: Because the turnaround time is so short, the immigrants aren't being vetted before they are released. Our government doesn't really know who they are releasing into our society. When these immigrant families come in from Russia, Syria and Iraq, some of them could be terrorists.

When men come into our facility with women and children, we have no proof any of them are actually related. Often they dont have documentation so we have to take their word on their name, age, nationality, etc. They could be anyone, child predators, traffickers, terrorists, the official added.

The official went on to add that the US immigration system is completely overwhelmed right now. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly trying to move people through the system as quickly as possible.

We have more people than we can handle. Its a crisis situation, everyone is overworked, the official said.

If you would like to apply for a US work visa includingL1 visas,E2 visas,O1 visasandH1B visas-Workpermit.com can help.

Workpermit.com is a specialist visa services firmwith over thirty years of experience dealing with visa applications. We can help with a wide range of visa applications to your country of choice.Contact usfor further details. You can also telephone0344 991 9222.

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US immigration: Rise in Russian, Iraqi and Syrian immigrants - Workpermit.com

Despite lockdown, this yearthere have been more migrants attempting to cross the Channel by boat than in the same period last year.

Under plans announced by Home Secretary Priti Patel, Border Force officers are to get new Australian-style turn-back powers to stop and redirect boats carrying illegal migrants across the Channel. But the new sovereign bordersbill isn't likely tocome into affect until Autumn.

In the meantime, as the weather improves more peoplewill attempt to make the dangerous crossing.Last summer, Roger Gough, leader of Kent County Councilsaid the numbers of migrant children crossing the Channel was 'unsustainable'and the authority was being 'overwhelmed'. So as the number of migrantscontinues to climb, can the communitiesand services on the front linecope?

This film documents the ongoing struggle between sympathies and frustrations of those living on the Kent coast.

For more videos from the Telegraph, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Kent under pressure: Living on the frontline of the migrant crisis - Telegraph.co.uk

Top Border Patrol officials said officers are overwhelmed by the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border, a spiraling crisis that intensified this week when a gun battle between rival cartel gangs broke out in a Texas town.

A week ago I would not have called this a crisis. Today it meets the definition. We are overwhelmed, Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News Wednesday night.

We do not have the resources to stop the cartels from bringing in illegal aliens, from bringing in drugs, therefore we are in fact in a crisis, he added.

On Tuesday, President Biden said he did not have any plans to travel to the southern border at the moment amid a surge in migrants.

Instead, Biden issued a blunt message to migrants thinking about crossing the border, saying Dont come over when asked by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

Dont leave your town or city or community, he added.

A senior CBP official told Fox the situation is untenable.

The president understands it is a crisis which is why he told migrants Dont come over,' the official told the network on condition of anonymity.

In undoing former President Donald Trumps border initiatives, Biden unleashed a flood of illegal migrantsat the border, including thousands of unescorted children.

In his first month in office, heended construction of Trumps signature border wall and beganto end the Remain in Mexico policyunder which about 71,000 Central American asylum applicants were awaiting rulings in Mexico.

More than 4,000 migrant children were being held by the Border Patrol as of Sunday, with at least 3,000 of them staying in custody longer than the 72-hour limit set by a court order, a US official told the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the border situation as difficult, but stopped short of calling it a crisis, according to Fox News.

The situation at the southwest border is difficult, Mayorkas said. We are working around the clock to manage it and we will continue to do so. That is our job. We are making progress and we are executing on our plan. It will take time and we will not waver in our commitment to succeed.

The CBP officials made their comments as the news outlet reported that a gunfight had erupted near Roma, a Texas community between two rival cartels.

Jaeson Jones, a former captain in theTexasDepartment of Public Safetys intelligence and counter-terror division, said its time for the federal government to focus more on the mountingcartel violence.

Veronica G. Cardenas/Reuters

Paul Ratje/Reuters

Adrees Latif/Reuters

Adrees Latif/Reuters

The Biden administration is not permitting state and local authorities...

Jones toldTucker Carlson Tonightthat he regularly witnesses gun battles in theMexicancity of Miguel Aleman,Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande from Roma, Fox News reported.

That community has been inbattle between two cartelsfor the last two years:Cartel del Golfo The Gulf Cartel and Cartel del Noreste, known as Los Zetas by many people, Jones said.

The rest is here:
US border officials say the migrant 'crisis' getting worse