EAGLE PASS, Texas – Beneath a blazing sun, a record number of migrants seeking to enter the United States are crossing the Mexican border. Some wade or swim through the waters of the Rio Grande into Texas. Smugglers ferry groups of others on rafts.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, promised a more humane border policy than that of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, but the increase in numbers has challenged U.S. law enforcement and drawn criticism from both political parties.
The U.S. Border Patrol made more than 1.6 million arrests through June in the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1, on pace to exceed the 1.7 million arrests during all of the last fiscal year, U.S. government data shows.
(Photos by Go Nakamura in Eagle Pass, Texas, and Adrees Latif near Roma, Texas; Reporting by Sofia Ahmed in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Howard Goller)