New video footage out of Del Rio, Texas shows hundreds of migrants illegally streaming into the U.S. across the Rio Grande, joining thousands of migrants who are already camped out under the international bridge.
Fox News captured video of the devastating scene during a ride along in a Texas Department of Safety helicopter after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded its drones in the area.
The video showed hundreds of people, mostly from Haiti, walking across a dam to enter the U.S. They then follow a dirt path to join an encampment under the bridge where upwards of 11,000 migrants are waiting to be processed by Border Patrol agents, up from 8,000 as of Thursday morning.
The number of migrants at the camp has nearly tripled since Wednesday, when there were 4,000 migrants there. Border Patrol agents are struggling to process new arrivals.
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin described it as a “nonstop trail of migrants” who are crossing the Rio Grande in multiple areas.
The footage comes just one day after Representative Tony Gonzalez (R., Texas) visited the migrant camp and said the situation was “as bad as I’ve ever seen it, and I’m not taking that lightly.”
Gonzalez wrote in a tweet that “there is virtually no border,” with migrants freely between the U.S. and Mexico.
The Democratic mayor of Del Rio, Bruno Lozano, called on the Biden administration to address the crisis, saying that the open border presents a “terrorism” threat.
“Border Patrol is overwhelmed,” Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told the Texas Tribune. “They just can’t process them fast enough, so there’s a backlog of these individuals underneath the bridge. They’re not detained, they’re just gathered there waiting their turn to get processed.”
Customs and Border Protection said it was deploying more agents to the area to help process migrants more quickly.
“The Border Patrol is increasing its manpower in the Del Rio Sector and coordinating efforts within DHS and other relevant federal, state and local partners to immediately address the current level of migrant encounters,” the agency told the Washington Post. “To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site while migrants wait to be taken into USBP custody.”
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