Illegal migrant "ladder crews" are climbing over the southern border wall in Arizona on a nightly basis, Breitbart reported Wednesday.
Groups of more than 100 illegal migrants are using ladders supplied by smugglers to get over the steel wall near Douglas, Arizona, on a nightly basis to overwhelm the limited number of Customs and Border Protection agents working in that area, a source inside of CBP told the news outlet.
Known as "ladder crews," the groups count on the agents taking time to process illegals that surrendered in other areas, like Yuma, to scale the barrier and elude apprehension, the article said.
According to the report, those scaling the wall at night are usually single individuals that would face immediate return to their home country if they were captured.
Almost 2 million illegal migrants have been encountered by border patrol so far, this fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30, according to the agency.
CBP reported almost 200,000 of those encounters on the southwest land border in July alone.
The nightly wall climb is not a new phenomenon.
In January 2019, a group of about 110 illegal migrants scaled the wall in the Yuma, Arizona, sector using a smuggler-supplied ladder, CBP posted on Twitter at the time.
In early August, the Washington Times reported that a group trying to scale the border wall in a remote part of East Otay Mesa, California, using 29 "makeshift" ladders, retreated to Mexico once CBP discovered them with the use of a drone.
In addition to the ladders, agents recovered 75 rounds of ammunition, according to the report.
Border agents have been "overwhelmed" by the staggering numbers of illegal migrants coming into the country, estimating that more than 1,000 were coming each day, the Washington Post reported in April 2021.
According to that report, the number of got-aways, illegal migrants that are able to escape capture, is especially high in southern Arizona, where the staffing is lower.
"There are maybe 20 groups a day that are observed, but there's nobody to try to go after them," a CBP agent told the Post at the time. "They just keep walking until they're out of sight."
According to the Post's report, these crossings are orchestrated by the cartels and smugglers to make sure agents are distracted by a large group, while much smaller groups cross unimpeded at other locations.
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