In the Del Rio Sector, Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz and his agents continue moving forward with their border security mission and humanitarian crisis.

“For the past few years, the Border Patrol has faced a lot of scrutinies. Right now we have a border security mission and a humanitarian crisis on a daily basis,” said Ortiz.

Ortiz touched base on some of the problems being seen and how the Border Patrol is dealing with such issues.

“At this point, we do have some of our facilities that have exceeded their capacity. Here in the Del Rio Sector, we have been very fortunate to be able to process detainees, fairly quickly. But we’re not equipped to hold people long term,” added Ortiz.

Ortiz states that’s one of the reasons temporary shelters have been set up at the Eagle Pass B.P. Station.

“That is going to allow us to hold about another 250 people than we have in custody right now. That will alleviate some of the overcrowding.

We are going to try to do a better job of processing people and then turn them over to the other agencies,” expressed Ortiz. “Border Patrol is not the sole source of detention.

We are processing centers, not detention centers. To be able to expedite the process at our end really benefits us.” “We do have people in our custody for longer than what we would like to see them in our custody. Unfortunately, across the nation, we’re all fighting for the same beds.

We work with our judicial service, Marshall’s service, ICE, to be able to place these individuals at the first available bed that comes open. We are trying to make sure that we do have accommodations so we don’t find ourselves placing someone in conditions that we really know they shouldn’t be in for a long period of time. We are installing showers in most of our facilities, we transport people to other facilities, change of their diet, so we can assure that some of the scrutiny that has gone on isn’t placed in this Sector, unduly.” stated Ortiz.

Ortiz added that agent training has been expanded to a Scenario Type Training to be able to prepare for different issues now being faced under this immigration surge.