A government video obtained by Fox News shows a group of heavily armed men toting AK-47s escorting an illegal alien woman and her son unlawfully across the U.S. border and into Arizona, prompting even more concerns about who exactly is coming into the United States illegally via Mexico – and the dangerous people who are bringing them.
U.S. Border Patrol surveillance cameras caught the armed smugglers escort the migrant family at 10 p.m. Saturday near the town of Lukeville in the southwest corner of Arizona.
The video shows four to five men in full tactical gear and masks -- carrying long guns and AK-47 assault rifles – escort a Guatemalan woman and her 8-year-old child under a vehicle barrier. The armed escorts turned back across the border. The woman and child turned themselves into border agents, who responded to the incursion.
…Border officials said the incident represents how criminal organizations are behind the lucrative surge of Central American immigrants. Guatemalans are paying roughly $7,000 to smugglers for transport from their home to the U.S. border.
“This is highly unusual and highly concerning to the agency,” said a border official who briefed Fox News. “These armed individuals along the border represent an escalation of tactics. This is not mom and dad and kids deciding to head to the border. This is a no kidding, orchestrated effort to bring individuals to the US. It is not just the numbers. It’s who is running this enterprise.”
While congressional Democrats and the media have sought to portray the massive surge in illegal immigration at the Southwest U.S. border as nothing more than innocent refugee families feeling violence and poverty in Central America, the Trump administration, including dozens of border patrol officials, have long warned that the influx is tied to large, lucrative human smuggling operations by dangerous groups that extort money from migrant families, use children as pawns to cross the border, and often go hand-in-hand with sex trafficking and assault.