Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is in Texas this week for a meeting with border officers in Uvalde as that city and others along the U.S.-Mexico border are seeing a sharp rise in the number of migrants apprehended.
Erika Pinheiro with the humanitarian aid group Al Otro Lado says asylum seekers who are turned away from ports of entry are left with no choice if they still want to enter the U.S. but to cross between them.
"And due to the large number of individuals who are crossing between ports of entry up on the California border, Border Patrol has decided to hold thousands of migrants in open-air detention sites," Pinheiro said.
Pinheiro says migrants are being held in these outdoor sites for up to four days.
This week near the Arizona border town of Lukeville, some 750 migrants spent the night in a makeshift site waiting to be processed by the Border Patrol.
