Thousands of illegal immigrants from Asia, Africa rush the Arizona-Mexico border

Victor Castaneda shook his head as he pointed to water bottles, mylar blankets, and plastic bags strewn across the rocky hillsides and caught in scraggly bushes, as he drove down South Puerto Blanco Drive in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Ajo, Ariz. Ashy fire pits dotted what used to be clean, designated wilderness, which is defined as a nationally preserved system under the Wilderness Act of 1964.

Organ Pipe is a unit of the National Park Service and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Castaneda formerly operated heavy equipment for Southwest Construction, the company contracted to build the border wall across Arizona. “They didn’t even wanna see a cigarette butt on the ground,” he said. “We had that place policed … no trash. It was all pristine.”

The area now is a new hotspot for thousands of immigrants entering the United States illegally instead of waiting for permission at the nearby port of entry in Lukeville, Ariz. On Dec. 4, U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed the international border crossing between Lukeville and Sonoyta, Mexico, indefinitely to focus resources on the flood of illegal entries overwhelming the remote, desert area. During the first week of December, Border Patrol agents apprehended 18,900 immigrants—an average of 2,700 per day—illegally crossing into the Tucson Sector. That area includes Lukeville, a small town that hosts one of the busiest crossing points for legal work and trade.

The majority of the immigrants apprehended still originate from Central and South America. But footage and on-the-ground reports from the hastily-erected processing center at Lukeville show groups of people from Asian and African nations, including Senegal, Bangladesh, and China, that points to a demographic shift.

Jeff Rainforth, a freelance reporter who specializes in conflict zones, has camped in Lukeville since early October to observe the situation. “It kept piling up … just massive lines,” Rainforth said. He witnessed illegal immigrants cutting through the wall and streaming through the Lukeville port of entry. “There’s just not enough Border Patrol to race along the wall and catch them,” Rainforth said. He said most of the people appeared to be from Africa, India, and the Middle East.

A portion of the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona Photo by Bethany Morawe

Michael DeBruhl is the director of Sacred Heart Shelter for immigrants in El Paso, Texas, and a retired Border Patrol executive. He said what had been primarily Mexican nationals crossing the border between the 1980s and early 2000s began to shift as gang violence worsened in Central American countries around 2012. During the next few years, the number of Central Americans often exceeded the Mexicans encountered.

Today, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans fleeing oppressive regimes and faltering economies compose the greatest percentage of the illegal population. Venuezeulans make up 70 to 80 percent of the immigrants DeBruhl serves at his El Paso shelter. In October, Venezuelans surpassed Mexicans as the single largest nationality crossing the southern border illegally, and the group makes up the majority of the over 120,000 immigrants overwhelming New York City shelters. As of August, more than 7 million out of Venezuela’s 29 million citizens had fled the country in what has become the second largest displacement crisis in the world. Economic stagnation and political instability is also fueling rising Colombian and Ecuadorian entries.

CBP data verifies that authorities are encountering more migrants from further afield. Agents confronted 52,700 Chinese nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, almost double the number of Chinese immigrants in 2022. So far, agents have already documented 7,166 Chinese immigrants at the southern border in the fiscal year that began in October. About 30,000 more Indian nationals crossed the border last year compared to the previous year. In a recent crackdown on human trafficking and smuggling, the international police organization, Interpol, documented migrants from 69 countries traveling through South and Central America hoping to reach the United States.

Non-Mexicans can’t be quickly turned back across the border. “If you’re from another country, our responsibility in the United States is to return you back to your country,” said DeBruhl. “So that … caused a lot of problems. There wasn’t enough infrastructure and personnel to deal with that situation.”

It gets even more complicated when countries won’t accept immigrants back. Growing numbers of Chinese immigrants crossing the border illegally are pursuing an asylum claim in immigration court, claiming they are the victims of persecution because of their affiliation to a political, religious, or social group. Many are winning their cases, but even if they don’t they will likely stay in the United States, China usually doesn’t take them back.

“An unprecedented number of people from all over the world are being displaced,” DeBruhl said. “So I think that’s what we’re seeing in the United States.” The United Nations reported 108.4 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2022—an increase of 19 million from 2021.

Laurence Benenson, the vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Immigration Forum, pointed to the massive backlogs choking the U.S. legal immigration system. “Global migration is elevated and we’re seeing that all across the world,” he said. “The change that we’ve seen in terms of the makeup of the nationalities coming to the border … in many ways just reflects the dysfunction of our system.”

Backlogged cases for employment-based greencards have reached 1.8 million, of which 1.1 million were filed by Indians. The Cato Institute noted that Indian applicants would need to wait in line 134 years to receive a green card, and more than 400,000 will likely die waiting. Part of the problem is the United States’ 140,000 annual cap and 7 percent per-country limit. “We don’t have a lot of options. People are entering at the U.S. southern border and policymakers are grappling with that now,” said Benenson.

Social media apps like WhatsApp and Facebook allow immigrants to instantly share information with friends and relatives about the best routes and crossing points. Smugglers can easily advertise their services and get in contact with potential travelers. Thousands of Mauritanians and other West Africans began making their way to the United States using a migration route through Nicaragua popularized on WhatsApp and TikTok.

“We see people from all over the world: West Africa, India, Central America,” Laurie Cantillo, a volunteer and board member with the nonprofit humanitarian aid organization, Humane Borders, told WORLD in an email. The organization operates six water stations for migrants along the border wall road in the area around Organ Pipe. “Our volunteers have been out on a daily basis to replenish drinking water and help people who were walking for miles, some for days, along the wall,” Cantillo said.

DeBruhl said past migration surges at or around particular ports of entry typically lasted two to five years. But now, thanks to social media, hotspots shift rapidly and often catch CBP off guard. Smugglers use internet channels to direct immigrants to remote crossing points where Border Patrol agents are thinly scattered across miles of desert. The strain forces CBP to close checkpoints and divert resources to processing the rush of asylum-seekers, Chris Clem, the former sector chief for Yuma, Ariz., told the Associated Press.

That’s what happened in Lukeville. CBP erected a temporary processing center, a large tent with mobile showers and bathrooms. Despite the high numbers of legal traffic at the port of entry in the state’s busiest sector, the agency has not announced plans to reopen the port.

A temporary processing center Photo by Bethany Morawe

CBP agents are also stretched thin along the Texas border. The agency temporarily shut down international railway crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso on Monday so agents can help with processing migrants, despite rail operators’ warnings that the closure would disrupt Christmas trade. That same day, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill allowing state and local law enforcement to charge immigrants who cross the border illegally with a state misdemeanor.

Travelers going between Lukeville, Ariz., and Mexico must now travel two hours out of their way. “It’s not okay for Arizona’s families. It’s not good for tourism. It’s not good for business,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., told KTAR News earlier this month. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., joined Sinema in urging the federal government to send national guard troops to reopen the port.

Gov. Katie Hobbs visited Lukeville and demanded the Biden administration reimburse the state for the economic effects of closing the entry point. “For far too long, Arizona has [borne] the brunt of federal inaction on our southern border and I am tired of it,” she told reporters. Hobbs ordered National Guard troops to the state's southern border Friday.

Scott Felger, a part-time resident of the nearby town of Ajo, Ariz., has been using the Lukeville port of entry regularly since 2012. Felger shops, sees a dentist, and repairs his car across the border in Sonoyta, Mexico. He was visiting Sonoyta on Dec. 4th when CBP closed the port. When he drove up to the international bridge, normally full of vendors who depend on American traffic, the area was deserted except for one man in a wheelchair. “It was eerie,” Felger said.