The border gates in Arizona have finally been closed

The floodgates welded on the US-Mexico border have finally closed – but the nightmare for border officials continues as migrants now rush through the nearest legal entry point.

As The Post exclusively reported, for at least two months cartels had been taking advantage of the 114 open storm gates near Lukeville, Arizona, to outrageously offload vans full of migrants on the Mexican side and funnel them to America, making the Tucson sector the busiest the world made USA because of illegal border crossings of migrants.

Now they simply face the legal process and apply for asylum, which continues to overwhelm Tucson’s border protection sector.

“I think we see more than 2,200 migrants every day; It has to be a lot more,” a border official working in the area told The Post.

That estimate is a huge jump compared to the 1,300 migrants per day entering the Tucson sector in July, according to Border Police.

The huge gates in the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona – several feet wide and 12 feet high – were quietly sealed last week, sources confirmed to The Post.

The gates were closed early — as border police previously told The Post, the doors are open from June through late September for the Grand Canyon State’s annual monsoon season.

Though the gates have been opened in previous years and under previous administrations, never have they been so brazenly used by smugglers to bring many thousands of migrants into the United States. The Tuscon sector recorded 42,561 encounters with illegal and legal cross-border workers in July alone.

The border police will decide when the gates will open and close, the agency previously confirmed.

“In my opinion and the opinion of the Border Patrol officer, these gates should never be opened,” Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in August.

The Post first reported on the open gates on Aug. 20, which by then had been open for up to two months. Despite the apparent emergency, when migrants were photographed pouring in, they were not locked down for the next two weeks.

Agents on the ground believe the tipping point was that nearly all of Tucson’s border patrol resources were expended to deal with the migrant influx.

After migrants pass through the locks, many border officials turn themselves in, hoping to be allowed to stay in the US while they seek asylum.

“We thought the agents would tell us something,” said an Ecuadorian migrant met by The Post in August. “But we just walked in.”

The cross-border commuters are then taken by bus to the nearest border guard station in the small town of Ajo for clearance. This includes fingerprinting, conducting a background check and logging of all information.

Agents were brought in from Texas to help the understaffed Ajo station process migrants.

But even the extra help is not enough.

At least two busloads a day, around 140 migrants, have to be driven to Tucson, two hours away, just to be processed.

Agents assigned to other parts of the Tucson Sector, which encompasses the entire state except Yuma, are being hauled off to Tucson to help deal with the seemingly endless streams of migrants.

When the locks first opened, bewildered border guards told the Post they saw no reason, knowing the monsoon season would start late this year, in mid-July instead of June.

The Post witnessed two Chinese nationals on a motorbike ride through the gates.

Frustrated officials even went so far as to close the gates several times to keep migrants out.

“We tried to close the gates but orders came in to leave them open,” a source said. “In a bad neighborhood you wouldn’t leave the front door of your house open.”

Then the agents watched in horror as senior officials in the department decided to weld open the gates to prevent the agents from closing them.

Tucson surged from just over 27,000 border encounters in June to over 42,000 in July, surpassing the traditionally busier border towns of El Paso and Laredo, Texas.

August and September numbers are likely to skyrocket, agents believe. One said, “We didn’t even make it difficult for them.” We basically advertised, “That’s how you get in.”

Border Patrol said in a statement, “Fences in the Tucson sector were constructed at various times between 2009 and 2021, and throughout the history of the infrastructure, during the monsoon season and before possible heavy rains or flooding, CBP has opened stormwater drainage gates around one.” ensure proper drainage and minimize potential impact on infrastructure.”