'It's a humanitarian disaster': wave of migrants overwhelms authorities in the US

Migrant camp, Arizona — In a remote part of the Arizona desert, near a hole in the border wall, dozens of migrants huddled around wood fires.

Fleeing war in Sudan, violent gangs in Central America or Mexican cartels, the men had crossed illegally into the United States.walked over rugged terrain for hours and arrived here exhausted, hungry and cold.

They wanted to turn themselves in to the authorities to ask for asylum, but they were stranded here, kilometers from the nearest town, Sásabe.

Then, as temperatures dropped, a convoy of U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived, loaded the men into a van for processing and rushed to find more people in need of rescue.

“We are not prepared to deal with this,” said Scott Carmon, Border Patrol surveillance commander. “It is a humanitarian disaster.”

This is the crisis unfolding at the United States' southern border, as encounters with migrants again reach record levels and test the capacity of American law enforcement, with far-reaching repercussions for the Biden Administration.

Thousands of migrants arrive every day, from Africa, Asia or South America, driven by relentless violence, desperation and poverty. In May, The Biden administration briefly celebrated as crossings slowed, even after pandemic-era border restrictions were lifted and many feared the floodgates would open. But the numbers have skyrocketed in recent months, sparking criticism from both Republicans and Democrats and fears within the Administration that the issue will damage the Democrats' electoral future.

In a recent week, the number of arrests reached more than 10,000 a day — straining the Border Patrol and overwhelming small towns on both sides of the border, where people have been funneled by smugglers consolidating new routes to evade capture.

“In terms of migrants per day, December 2023 surpasses any average we have seen,” said Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. “All the officials who comment on it, at all levels, say they are close to or beyond the breaking point.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other senior officials traveled to Mexico on Dec. 27 to discuss the surge in migration with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as U.S. officials monitored a caravan of more than 2 thousand migrants moving north via Mexico to the United States. The caravan is unlikely to reach the United States, experts said, but it has drawn media attention to the flood of migrants who have crossed the border.

“If you cross in a very remote place, there won't be many agents and that increases your chances of being released into the United States,” Isacson said. “There is no place to put people. “They can’t keep you.”

In Arizona, border officials closed a key port of entry to legal crossings in early December to focus on illegal ones.

Izzeddin, a 32-year-old Sudanese migrant who asked to be identified only by his first name, was recently among a dozen men from his homeland at the Arizona camp.

A civil war in Sudan has forced millions of people to flee their homes, including these men, who said they lost family members and left loved ones in refugee camps to travel to the United States.

Izzeddin said he and his companions were waiting for “the border patrol to come pick us up and give us protection.”

“It doesn't matter if it's cold,” he said of the conditions in Arizona. “There is peace here.”

NATALIE KITROEFF. THE NEW YORK TIMES