Fox News has captured heartbreaking footage shot by an aerial drone showing hundreds of migrants in a makeshift holding pen set up by US Customs and Border Patrol under a large bridge in the city of Mission, Texas.
The footage shows hundreds of people encamped at the facility, which appears to lack even basic amenities apart from a few porta potties, with vehicles seen driving on the bridge above amid blazing daytime temperatures of close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37+ Celsius). Fox correspondent Bill Melugin estimates the facility may be holding up to a thousand people.
Mission is situated near Texas’s southern tip, and borders the US-Mexico frontier along the Rio Grande River.
The bridge in the video is the Anzalduas International Bridge, along which motorists from the two countries pass into one another’s nations, with customs points set up on either side.
The drone footage has gone viral, racking up over 400,000 views in just over 12 hours. Senior House Republican Elise Stefanik retweeted the video to express her outrage, calling it an “absolute catastrophe from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and House and Senate Democrats.”
In addition to serving as a popular border crossing, the Anzalduas International Bridge crossing is known as a hotspot for the cross-border illegal drug trade. Last week, CBP agents in the South Texas corridor region announced that they had seized $1.5 million in methamphetamine hidden in a vehicle’s tires.
Also last week, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott moved to deploy National Guard units along the border to help law enforcement attempt to halt the inflow.
Border Crisis
The Biden administration has taken heavy criticism over its handling of the border crisis, with the hot topic issue seen by many voters as one of the president’s key failures to date. Recent Associated Press and NORC polling has found that just 43 percent of Americans approve of the White House’s handling of immigration, with fifty-four percent expressing disapproval.
Border patrol apprehensions surpassed one million for 2021 in June, according to official data, with media investigators speculating that as many as two million people have entered the country illegally without being caught.
The situation on the border became a major problem just weeks into Biden’s term, beginning after the president issued nearly a dozen immigration-related directives – halting Donald Trump’s border wall, fortifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, pledging to end “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement,” and cancelling the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” incentives programme. On top of that, the administration hinted that it would consider a “path to citizenship” for the estimated 11 million illegals already living in the United States. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei accused Biden of fueling the crisis via its policies and “lukewarm” rhetoric on illegal immigration.
Trump has blasted the new administration’s decision to end his hardline policies, accusing Biden of “destroying our country.”