CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Last December, border crossings reached an all-time high at over 300,000, but now those numbers have come down and Border Patrol officials in Brooks County believe there are several contributing factors.
Agents told 3NEWS that government policy changes, as well as different border defense strategies have decreased the amount of crossings.
"Compared to last year, we're seeing about a 45 percent decrease in crossings," Border Patrol Agent Christina Smallwood said.
However, Border Patrol Agent Andres Garcia said smugglers still keep them on the move.
"Right now it's pretty much allocating the manpower we need," Garcia said. "There's some stations with heavier traffic, that being said for example, McAllen is going to have more activity than let's say another station so that's why we place them. We work in conjunction with all the stations if they happen to need more manpower it's actually being allocated there."
The checkpoint south of Falfurrias is something migrants try and avoid by walking around it and through the wild horse desert.
"We have our agents that are on primary and trained, we also have canines," Smallwood said. "Besides that we have radiation detectors and we also have x-ray machines."
Agents said this part of the border used to rank first in all U.S. crossings every year for the past 10 years, now it's ranked fifth.
"We became the first sector in actually conducting the repatriation flights is, you know, like you saw all of last year, you know, with the Title 42 coming to an end. A lot of to, to give you an example, a lot of people from Venezuela going back to their country in a plane, you know, Guatemalans in a plane, you know, Honduras, people in a plane, that just gives you a lot of you know, actually stuff that, you know, steps that we've taken into account and that actually delivers results," Garcia said.
3NEWS asked which countries most of the migrants are coming from and they said it's still those from Central America, countries like Honduras and Guatemala.
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