Brazen people smugglers were filmed using power tools to cut down a section of the 30ft steel border wall in Arizona, then taunting a camera crew on the other side as they waved a one-legged man and his family through.
An unidentified coyote — the mexican term for a border smuggler — knelt as he used a power tool to break open part of the gate so an elderly man with a walker and seven of his family members could simply walk through, with no border patrol officers in sight.
Afterwards the coyote who led them into the US could be seen in the gap he created and taunted NewsNation Border Correspondent Ali Bradley.
“He’s flexing, he’s waving, he’s giving us the thumbs up when they’re done,” she told anchor Markie Martin on “Morning in America.”
About two hours later, Bradley said the smuggler and his crew returned to the scene to cut down more slats of the border wall in the remote area near Lukesville, which has been seiged with thousands of illegal border crossers since Summer.
“They were so brazen about it. They brought out an electric saw, they had drills with them, they even brought out a generator — like a secondary crew came out there and brought out this other equipment,” Bradley reported.
“The plan was to cut through the base of that bollard and actually hitch it to the back of the vehicle and tear it right off the wall.”
Again, Bradley said the smugglers started to taunt her, blowing her kisses on the other side.
“They’re laughing and they just continued right along, cutting through that [border] bollard,” she recounted.
The reporter said she eventually called Border Patrol to the area — the same place used by thousands of migrants to pass through when the floodgates were left open over the summer — and the crew scattered.
But they continued to talk to the Border Patrol agents through the wall, calling the agents “mi amigo” and asking them “Que pasa? [What’s up?]”
“And this is one of the things, you guys, why Border Patrol says its so important for them to be able to be out there doing that kind of work,” Bradley said, referring to the need to keep border agents in the field and stopping operations like the men cutting down the border, rather than working behind the scenes processing migrants or doing paperwork.
“You know, down here in Lukeville, the sector is absolutely exploding,” Bradley said, as the NewsNation camera captured what she claimed were six to 700 single adults sitting by the border wall overnight.
The migrants who cross the border are turning themselves in for processing legally and claiming asylum, which continues to overwhelm Border Patrol agents who have to document each individual.
Those who come with families — like the Peruvians caught on camera slipping through the wall — get to skip the line and are sent to facilities to be processed for asylum claims immediately, she said.
“And it really is a lucrative game to these cartel guys over there because they’re making hand over fist, a lot of money doing this, pushing those people through the wall,” Bradley said.
Over just a single 24-hour period in September, more than 7,000 immigrants surrendered to Border Patrol agents in Lukeville.
Then on Monday the international border crossing was even shut down because the Border Patrol agents there were so overwhelmed by the massive numbers of migrants that were coming into the country.
The closure was undertaken “in order to redirect personnel to assist the US Border Patrol with taking migrants into custody,” Customs and Border Protection said.