by Neetu Chandak
Arizona Border Patrol agents arrested 193 illegal immigrants in two separate instances within two hours on Sunday.
Most of the people were traveling as families, though 11 were determined to be unaccompanied children, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported Wednesday. The first encounter had 102 illegal immigrants surrender to Border Patrol officials and 91 illegal immigrants were found an hour later.
Children as little as 1 year old were part of the groups. The adults and children originated from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to CBP.
“Transnational criminal organizations exploit the vulnerability of foreign nationals with false promises of legal status and encourage dangerous border crossings, placing lives at risk,” CBP said in its news release.
The illegal immigrants were processed for immigration violations.
The arrest of over 190 illegal immigrants in Arizona was followed by another group of 170 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children and families who turned themselves in to Texas Border Patrol agents on Tuesday.
Border Patrol arrested nearly 27 percent of 16-year-old and around 37 percent of 17-year-old unaccompanied children for fiscal year 2018 to date, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Nearly 3 percent of unaccompanied children at or below 3 years old were arrested.
Those traveling in families, however, had more younger children that were arrested. Over 50 percent of children at or below 7 years old who came with their parents illegally were arrested as of April.
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