BUFFALO, N.Y. — More details came out Wednesday on the U.S. Border Patrol arrest of 13 people in South Buffalo.
Agents say they were all from south of the Texas border as undocumented people without work permits here in the United States. Some of them had prior involvement with the Border Patrol in Texas.
This occurs during a presidential campaign with immigration becoming a major issue. It has happened here before.
The Batavia Federal Detention Center is now where six of the individuals are being held and facing deportation hearings. They were among the 13 people found in South Buffalo who were found riding in two vans with North Carolina plates on Tuesday. They were spotted near Tifft Street and Route 5 by Border Patrol agents.
There were 12 men and one woman from Mexico and Nicaragua.
It was determined that six of them some actually crossed the border in Texas, were arrested there by Border Patrol, and were scheduled for a hearing in San Antonio, for which they failed to appear.
Buffalo-based immigration attorney Matthew Kolken told 2 on Your Side: "What is concerning is that there's six individuals who were given the opportunity, after being encountered in the United States, to do it the right way, and they once again have flaunted the law by failing to attend either an interview with immigration and customs enforcement, or alternatively with an immigration judge."
Somehow they ended up with the others in North Carolina, and then traveled north to Buffalo to work at jobs paying $14 an hour.
Sources say the vans were traced to two brothers in North Carolina who are also illegally in the United States and also facing deportation.
Kolken pointed out: "There are a number of places in this area that are dependent upon migrant labor, both legal and illegal, and it doesn't surprise me that there's a pipeline that's coming up here to allow individuals to seek employment without authorization."
And regarding those would-be employers, he noted: "They can be charged with a crime for harboring. They can go to jail. These are serious crimes in this country."
While such undocumented arrests may seem unusual in Western New York, we have seen this before. In 2017, over 30 undocumented individuals were arrested. Some were taken into custody at a Grand Island drug store, and others were picked up at a Hamburg convenience store.
And, of course, this comes just after last week's split-screen presidential candidate visits to the Texas border and strong disagreement over the red-hot immigration issue.
Kolken claims past Presidents — both Democrats and Republicans like Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Trump — have taken a stronger stance on illegal border crossings.
"When you know that you can get here, and if you don't get caught, generally speaking ,you're going to be allowed to remain in this country. This press release that we see, this is an outlier. This has not happened during the first three years of President Biden's term with any frequency whatsoever," Kolken said.
Kolken also contends that Border Patrol agents may be a bit more aggressive than other agencies to make such arrests.
No one from Customs and Border Protection was available for an interview. But in a press release, Patrol Agent in Charge David Banks stated "These arrests can be attributed to our increased situational awareness and the diligence of our agents. It also illustrates how some undocumented individuals can be enticed to travel with promises of work, when they are not able to legally work in the U.S."