Jennie Taer
Federally-protected land along the border in Arizona is littered with feces and trash from the massive influx of illegal migrants in the area, according to photos provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation and accounts from Border Patrol agents.
The Organ Pipe National Monument, which preserves an area of the Sonoran desert inhabited by several endangered species, has been overrun by migrants waiting along the border wall to turn themselves into federal law enforcement authorities. Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director John Fabbricatore and a Border Patrol source in the area confirmed that no bathrooms were present in the area where hundreds of migrants wait, often for days, for agents to apprehend them.
The area of the monument that’s situated along the border is littered with trash, discarded identification documents and used phone sim cards, photos Fabbricatore provided to the DCNF show. The photos also show human feces dotting the landscape, which Fabbricatore said has the area smelling like one big outdoor bathroom.
“The border crisis has become an environmental crisis for the Organ Pipe National Monument. The amount of trash and feces that litter the park has become a health and safety concern. The Biden administration is not only failing on immigration they are failing our national parks,” Fabbricatore told the DCNF.
Border Patrol in Arizona’s Tucson sector, which encompasses the national monument, had to halt certain operations last week to support the influx of migrants crossing illegally. The agency canceled Border Patrol trainings in the area, closed a checkpoint and port of entry, and shut down its social media accounts over the latest migrant surge.
“I’ve been down here numerous times and the situation has gotten worse. The smell that permeates the air assaults your sense of smell to the point of shutting it off,” Fabbricatore said.
Migrants have been waiting days for Border Patrol apprehension due to a lack of resources to take them into custody, several agents in the area told the DCNF. Complicating things further, Border Patrol can’t keep migrants in their custody for more than 48 hours due to a court order.
“There’s no bathrooms down there, so the desert has turned into thousands of people’s bathrooms. Once we take them, we have porta-potties but nothing down on the line where everyone is waiting,” a Border Patrol agent in the area told the DCNF on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak publicly.
There were 17,500 apprehensions of illegal migrants in the Tucson sector last week, the sector’s Border Patrol Chief said.
Some areas of the park, including the border roads, have also been closed to the public, according to the National Park Service.
“The southeast border road along the wall is closed (not South Puerto Blanco Road, which is open) to pedestrian and vehicle traffic between the Lukeville Port of Entry to the Santa Rosa Mountains due to construction activity safety concerns,” the park service states on its website.
The House of Representatives recently passed legislation seeking to prevent the Biden administration from housing migrants on federal land, calling it “an important step in ensuring these actions by the Biden administration do not set a precedent for housing migrants on national parks across the country.”
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the National Park Service didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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