(Headline USA) The U.S. Border Patrol was forced to rescue more than a dozen illegal immigrants from a Texas sewer this week after their attempt to sneak into the country backfired.
Seventeen illegal immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador entered El Paso, Texas by traveling through the U.S. wastewater system via openings on the Rio Grande River. However, they were unable to get out of the sewers because the drains were welded shut by authorities to prevent migrants from using the sewer system to circumvent customs agents.
As a result, U.S. Border Patrol and the town’s fire department had to use a circular saw to pry open the storm drain and rescue the illegal aliens.
“Agents are deployed regularly to interdict this commonly used method and to rescue migrant lives commonly placed in danger by smugglers,” the agency said on social media.
The migrants were sent back to Mexico after being taken into custody by immigration officers, the agency reported.
“It’s like an all-day, all-night thing,” El Paso resident Rosalina Tapia said of the influx of illegal immigrants. “[Smugglers] picked our complex as a pickup zone.”
Late last year, illegal immigrants started camping out in El Paso’s airport after the city ended its charter busing program, by which it sent illegals to sanctuary cities like New York.
“Our airport right now is really bad,” El Paso City Council member Claudia Rodriguez said at the time. “Some people are sleeping in the airport.”
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, a Democrat, has come under fire for failing to take the migrant crisis seriously. Despite pressure from his city council, Leeser has refused to declare a state of emergency in the city.
This decision could be the result of pressure from the White House, which reportedly asked Leeser not to declare an emergency due to fear that it would make President Joe Biden look bad.
“He told me the White House asked him not to,” El Paso International Airport aviation director Sam Rodriguez said when asked why Leeser had turned down the city council’s request for an emergency declaration.
