A sharp-eyed Customs and Border Protection officer caught three illegal immigrants sneaking into the United States from Mexico wearing ghillie suits to simulate the Southwest’s sage brush.
Photos of the three men were posted to Twitter Thursday by Gloria Chavez, senior border patrol officer for the El Paso sector.
‘Smuggler Tactics!’ the agent wrote in her tweet. “People enter the #US illegally and often use extraordinary tactics to avoid detection and arrest. Kudos to #ElPaso sector #Santateresa agents for banning 3 migrants in #ghillie suits from blending into the southern #NewMexico desert terrain.’
Agents caught three migrants dressed in “ghillie suits” to blend in with the New Mexico terrain
Agents have already arrested migrants more than 2 million times in fiscal year 2022
In the Santa Teresa, New Mexico area, a suburb of El Paso, Texas, migrant arrests are up 60 percent
The photos show the three men, their faces blurred, wearing the sagging suits that match the sand around them. A border guard with a cowboy hat on horseback guards them.
In another shot, the men sit dejectedly on the sandy ground after being caught.
Invented in Scotland, ghillie suits can be used by hunters to avoid detection of prey or military snipers to blend in with the surrounding landscape.
The El Paso sector has seen a 60 percent rise in fears from migrants attempting to enter the US illegally.
The men were caught in Santa Teresa, NM, a suburb of the border town of El Paso, Texas of 4,258 people.
So far this fiscal year, border officials at the southern border have apprehended at least two million migrants attempting to cross illegally.
CBP sources told Fox News that this weekend’s migrant encounters reached 2,001,034, with most of the fourth quarter still to come. This number does not include the number of migrants who successfully evaded arrest.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram issued a dire warning on Friday that cartels were “killing Americans with fentanyl at an unprecedented rate.”
Customs and border officials seize thousands of pounds of fentanyl entering the United States each year
It comes after the agency released figures for July that showed encounters were below 200,000 in the first month since February. It was also the second straight month that encounters declined after four straight months of increases.
Last year, the number of matches at this point was 1,277,177 – more than 700,000 fewer than at the same time this year.
Meanwhile, buses full of migrants continue to be unloaded at the New York Port Authority on Wednesday as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushes ahead with an initiative to send illegal immigrants from his state to major U.S. cities.
So far, Abbott has sent at least 6,000 migrants to Washington, DC, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has bused at least 1,000 migrants from his state to the nation’s capital.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser have condemned Abbott’s efforts, which began in mid-April.
However, there is more than just migrants crossing at the border.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram issued a dire warning on Friday that cartels were “killing Americans with fentanyl at an unprecedented rate.”
“There are two cartels in Mexico, the Sinoloa Cartel and the El Jalisco Cartel, that are killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we’ve never seen before,” she said, adding that the cartels have become more aggressive were than before in previous years.
“These cartels are trading in calculated, premeditated treason to get fentanyl into the United States and get people to buy it — through counterfeit pills, through other drugs, by any means.”
“The whole world of drugs has changed,” she added.
Last year, there were over 107,000 drug overdoses in the US, 70% of them related to fentanyl.
In the first nine months of 2022, border officials seized over 5,000 pounds of fentanyl in San Diego and Imperial Counties alone.
“Mexican cartels are increasingly manufacturing fentanyl for distribution and sale in the United States. Precursors are imported from China and other countries and then compressed into pills, powders or other drugs in huge industrial-scale laboratories,” the Justice Department warned in a public statement Aug. 12.
Meanwhile, migrants have gotten more creative to avoid arrest when New Mexico border patrol agents arrested three dressed in dry-grass camouflage suits to blend in with local terrain.
Crediting the migrants with their “ghillie suits,” U.S. Border Protection Sector Director Gloria Chavez said in a tweet that people are “using extraordinary tactics to evade arrest and expose it.”