A Border Patrol agent along looks out at the U.S.-Canada Border. Photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger
Six Mexican citizens will appear in Burlington federal court Wednesday for charges of entering the country illegally.
They face federal criminal charges in Vermont after they were apprehended by Border Patrol in Derby Line late last month. A seventh individual, Francisco Javier Alejo-Medrano, 27, pleaded not guilty to a charge of illegally transporting aliens within the United States in federal court in Burlington Thursday.
The arrests came as Border Patrol reports a rise in the number of people apprehended along the northern border this year.
Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael McCarthy said in an email that in the border sector that includes Vermont, approximately twice as many people have been arrested so far this fiscal year compared to the same time last year.
By the end of April last year, Border Patrol had apprehended 268 people in Swanton Sector, according to their annual report. Last year, the number of people caught by Border Patrol totaled 736, the highest since 2011.
Alejo-Medrano was apprehended by Border Patrol on the evening of May 1 when he was driving a rental car with six people who authorities saw waiting in the woods near Derby Line, according to court papers.
Earlier in the night, at 8:54 p.m., border authorities had been alerted to activity along the border near Goodall Farm, and photos were taken showing seven subjects walking south from Canada. Then an agent saw a group of six people near the road, and watched them get into a car that pulled in, according to the affidavit.
The car then drove by an agent parked nearby, who pulled over the car.
Alejo-Medrano, the driver, told the agent he was a Mexican citizen, and that he didn’t have documents allowing him to enter or stay in the United States. The six passengers all also said they were Mexican.
The six passengers, who are facing illegal entry charges, are Jimena Cruz-Lopez, Griselda Encarnacion-De Jesus, Norberto Flores-Gutierrez, Ana Lilia Lopez, Yazmin Vasquero Balbuena, Julio Alfonso Vazquez-Florez, and one other person.
According to the Border Patrol affidavit, the area near Goodall Farm is “frequently” used in illicit activity across the boundary. Court papers referenced a similar instance on April 22, when five people from Mexico reportedly entered the United States there by foot and were picked up by a driver in a rental car.
Kraig LaPorte, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont, said Friday that illegal entry cases are “a priority of our office.”
Border cases are handled differently depending on the details of the case — a situation involving an undocumented immigrant who is present in the country is a civil offense, but illegally entering the country is a criminal offense, LaPorte said.
He confirmed that the office has seen an uptick in the number of cases involving illegal activity along the border, which is in line with Border Patrol’s observation, though he did not have specific statistics.
LaPorte said one factor that could be related to the increase in apprehensions along the northern border is a recent change in Canadian visa policies towards other countries. Federal authorities also cited the visa policy change in conjunction with a steep rise in border apprehension last summer.
Customs and Border Protection does not “speculate” about the motivation driving increased crossings, McCarthy said.
According to McCarthy, Romania, Mexico and Haiti are the most frequent home countries of people apprehended along the border so far this fiscal year.
Jay Diaz of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said it’s hard to know whether apprehensions along the border are up because there are more people crossing into the United States, or because of a change in Border Patrol enforcement.
Diaz was critical of prosecutors taking a more strict approach to border crimes.
“There’s a real waste of resources going to prosecuting these types of crimes which are essentially victimless,” he said.
Many people coming to Vermont and the United States are economic or humanitarian refugees, he said.
“Putting folks like that in jail cells, spending exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars to punish them, seems to conflict with our basic conception of our country as a nation of immigrants,” Diaz said.
Ellie French contributed reporting.
Read the story on VTDigger here: As border crossings climb, seven Mexican citizens face charges for illegal entry.