Border crossings expected to remain high in near term, senior CBP official says

Migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border are expected to remain high in the near term, according to a senior US Customs and Border Protection official, who noted that additional commitments from Mexico are expected to help eventually drive down numbers.

Federal authorities continued to grapple with a new surge of migrants over the weekend, following a wave of newcomers last week. On Sunday, Border Patrol agents arrested close to 9,000 people and apprehended around 7,500 people on Saturday, a Homeland Security official told CNN. The Del Rio and El Paso sectors are among the busiest along the US southern border.

“In the near term, we’d expect that numbers will probably stay somewhere close to where they were last week, as some of these things take effect,” the senior CBP official said, referring to increased enforcement by Mexico.

“As they take effect, it will start to influence people’s calculus about whether or not they should leave where they are right now, sell their belongings, leave their homes, and move towards the US southwest border,” the official added.

The official noted that the agency is operating in a “resource constrained environment,” and as a result, release of migrants as they go through their immigration proceedings has ticked up.

“We’ve not received additional resourcing despite having sought it in the supplemental from the Hill in order to be able to expand the capacity within CBP and ICE and USCIS to increase our capacity for things like expedited removal,” the official told CNN.

Officials had been monitoring the number of migrants crossing the treacherous Darién Gap – which connects Panama and Colombia and has recently served as a barometer for movement in the region – and expected an increase of crossings at the US southern border. But the surge of migrants, who are mostly from Venezuela,…