Rep. Tom Tiffany: NGO Smuggles Migrants Away from Border Before Federal Inspection

U.S. Representative Tom Tiffany (R-WI) posted video on social media showing what he described as NGO volunteers loading up migrants who just crossed the border and driving them to a camp. The migrants were removed from the border prior to any inspection or background investigation by U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Rep. Tiffany posted a drone video on X showing a group of migrants crossing through an opening in a Tucson Sector Border Wall. There do not appear to be any Border Patrol agents present at the time.

Tiffany stated that members of an NGO loaded migrants into vehicles and moved them to an encampment in the Coronado National Forrest. The Wisconsin representative added a citation to federal law making it “an offense for any person who encourages or brings an alien into the U.S.”

Tiffany later posted photos of the “illegal migrant encampment” where the NGO members took the migrants who were not inspected by Border Patrol agents.

It is not known if Border Patrol agents come to this encampment to process migrants and run criminal background checks.

These inspections by Border Patrol agents are critical in preventing migrants with previous convictions for violent acts or sexual offenses from successfully re-entering the United States.

One day before Tiffany’s post on X, Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin posted a reporter about a convicted rapist apprehended by his agents near Sells, Arizona. The Mexican national, Jose Trinidad-Lara, had a conviction for the rape of a child in Pasco, Washington.

Apprehension of migrants with criminal histories fell in each of the four years of the Trump administration. When President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, agents arrested 8,531 migrants with criminal histories, according to a CBP enforcement statistics report. In FY2020, Trump’s last full year in office, the number of arrests fell to 2,438, CBP reported.

The arrest of migrants with criminal histories immediately jumped up during the transition to the Biden administration. During FY21 the number of arrests climbed to 10,763 — exceeding any year of the Trump administration. By FY23, that number rose to 15,267. An additional 5,616 were arrested during the first quarter of FY24.

In total, 21,936 migrants with criminal histories were arrested during the four years of the Trump administration. In contrast, 43,674 migrants with criminal histories have been arrested during the first three and one-quarter years of the Biden administration.