Amid an overall drop in arrests of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S-Mexico border, an intriguing anomaly has cast a new light on human smuggling: Authorities report an almost tenfold spike in the number of Chinese people caught in the southern Arizona desert, the busiest smuggling corridor on the international line.
The Border Patrol in the Tucson sector has arrested at least 261 Chinese border-crossers this year, compared with an annual average of 32 during the last four years, officials said.
"They are the main [non-Mexicans] we catch," said field operations supervisor Juventino Pacheco of the patrol's international liaison unit in Nogales. "Lately we have been catching more Chinese than Central Americans." |