“Look at that yard of tractor-trailers,” Ramos said. “They can hide through all those trailers. We, the Border Patrol, have no infrastructure impedance-and-denial structures to be able to prevent that.”

So far in fiscal year 2019, agents have stopped 97 tractor-trailers carrying a combined 1,400 illegal immigrants into the country.

“Several years ago, if we had one or two tractor-trailer cases, of human beings being locked in there, that was a lot,” Ramos said. “It was uncommon. It was common to see people crossing this river without a smuggler. That’s not happening now.”

7. Disadvantaged in Vehicles

In rural border areas or ranch areas, agents can track illegal border crossers on foot, or better yet, in a vehicle.

Agents in the Laredo sector have a significant disadvantage regarding what they call “lateral mobility.” Essentially, that means there just aren’t enough roads to drive on.  

In Laredo, and in other more urban border cities, illegal immigrants can often travel much faster on foot. They’ll take a straighter route to residential areas, retail stores, schools, and parks than their pursuers ever could make to reach them.

“We don’t have a road down here. We don’t have a fence,” Ramos said. “We have trails that you can walk, but—imagine from where we were at—to get to the parkland would take us a good hour’s walk.

“Driving is ideal. We need to get to areas. We need to get to areas fast,” he said. “But we have to come here to this main road to try to get around to our power plant. That is the lateral mobility we were talking about.”

Most areas along the border in Laredo have no road whatsoever.

The Border Patrol created a rough road close to the Rio Grande River that sports utility vehicles and trucks could drive more easily than standard cars. Agents also worked with the Defense Department to build a smoother, paved road, but that road goes for only 4.5 miles along the 171 miles of border in the Laredo sector.

Garza said the 4.5 miles of paved road was started in 2016 and completed in 2018, and that the Defense Department is scheduled to complete another 7 miles by late 2019 or early 2020.

8. Questionable Families

Fake families have been a problem at various border check points. Under current law, it’s difficult for authorities to check whether a group is an actual family.

Garza recalls a time he processed a man and woman who crossed the border and said they were husband and wife.

Garza later saw the woman clinging to and laughing with another man. He said to the first man, “I thought that was your wife.”

The man who had professed to be the woman’s husband said the other man had threatened him. Garza had no means to prove otherwise.

The anecdote illustrates how Border Patrol agents often suspect that individuals are pretending to be a family. U.S. policy restricts family members from being detained separately.

Children often pose bigger questions, Ramos said.

“I used to be the juvenile coordinator and family coordinator. I can tell you that a lot of our agents, when they process a family, you get a gut feeling that that’s not a family,” Ramos said. “The problem with that is you just don’t know if that kid was really a family member, was it a borrowed kid, a recycled kid, or was it a stolen kid? You just don’t know. We talk about our immigration laws.”

“I encountered a case where there was a 84-year-old woman with a 3-year-old, claiming to be the mother,” Ramos said. “I said, ‘Ma’am, you’re 84 years old and that’s your daughter?’ She’s like, ‘She’s not really my daughter, she’s my granddaughter. She doesn’t know that. Let’s keep it that way.’”

“How do I know that’s true? How do I know she didn’t steal this little, tender-age girl that has no recollection of who the mom is?”

It isn’t that unusual for elderly people to illegally cross the border, Ramos added.

In rare cases, parents and children may still be separated.

“We’ve encountered a father with a criminal record and [he] wanted to bring in his child, thinking that we’re not going to separate them because he’s got his child,” Ramos said. “But he’s a felon and he’s wanted.”

This article by Fred Lucas originally appeared at The Daily Signal. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters