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7 months ago
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In the deepening migrant crisis along America's southern border, a new victim has emerged in local schools, where staff and students are seeing growing numbers break onto campus in an effort to outrun police and enter the country.
In the last two months, a middle school in New Mexico has seen migrants walk onto its campus twice, while a Texas high school this week caught a mob of 100 trying to cut a fence near its classrooms.
The incidents present a worrying new chapter in the escalating crisis.
Two schools on the border have seen migrants breach their campuses in the last three months
Middle school students from Santa Teresa in Sunland Park, New Mexico, after migrants breached campus
The students in New Mexico after the campus was put on lockdown last month
Texas National Guard personnel place a new fence with barbed wire near El Paso, Texas
Riverside High School and Middle School campus is a stone's throw from the Rio Grande and border wall
Santa Teresa Middle School, in Sunland Park, New Mexico just outside El Paso, was placed on lockdown twice after migrants ran onto the property.
Sunland Park is an area known for migrant smuggling.
In this part of the border, migrants are not seeking to surrender to federal authorities to make begin an asylum claim.
Instead, these migrants are looking to evade law enforcement all together.
'The school has been places on a secure status as Border Patrol agents are pursing suspicious individuals on campus,' the March 27 text sent to parents explained.
'Rest assured, all students are safely inside.'
A video of the incident showed the Customs and Border Protection chopper hovering over the school in search of six border crossers who were eventually apprehended.
'Whether it's a school, whether private property or a house, or anything, they jump into those locations just trying to get away from our apprehensions,' Border Patrol spokesman Refugio Socorro told local station KVIA.
Another video in the Sunland Park area shows a homeowner surprised to say Border Patrol had chased illegal immigrants into their backyard.
A look at the football stadium at Riverside High School in El Paso, Texas. The campus is located less than a mile from the US border wall
Two migrant men can been seen corralled on a man's back porch with no escape and a Border Patrol agent calling for back up.
'They were trying to get in,' the homeowner can be heard saying in Spanish in the clip.
A second federal agent arrives and the migrants are taken into custody.
'A lot of the people in that area that do try to evade arrest from our apprehensions, do have criminal a history or do have immigration history.
'So that's the reason why they just take off running and go through locations that they're not even familiar with,' Socorro added.
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