416 adult migrants used fake birth certificates to cross US-Mexico border as unaccompanied minors

Arrests of adult migrants who illegally crossed the border and posed as unaccompanied children are on pace to surpass the previous fiscal year’s total’s, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector.

Since October 1, 2021 – the start of fiscal year 2022 – there have been 416 who have been found to have posed as minors along the El Paso Sector, which is responsible for protecting 264 miles of the southwestern border in New Mexico and western Texas.

In comparison, border patrol officers stopped 559 imposters who tried to slip through the system in fiscal year 2021, which spanned from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021.

On one occasion, agents with the El Paso Sector Central Processing Center were able to uncover a 24-year-old man from Guatemala intentionally utilizing his 15-year-old brother’s birth certificate to enter the country.

In another incident, border agents at the processing center discovered a 20-year-old Honduran national had presented a fake birth certificate so that he could be released into the country.

The El Paso Sector declined to provide the dates and cities both migrants for both incidents because the investigations are still pending.

Asylum-seeking migrants, predominately from Latin American countries, wade across the Rio Grande river from Piedras Negras in Mexico to Eagle Pass, Texas on Sunday

Tatiana, a 10-year-old asylum-seeking migrant from Honduras, raises her hand as she is called to board a U.S. Border Patrol bus transporting unaccompanied children who crossed from Mexico to Texas through the Rio Grande on May 7

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Per United States law, both men face charges of providing false statements to federal agents and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., among other charges for unlawfully entering the country. They can also be fined and sent to prison.

Encounters with adults falsely presenting themselves as unaccompanied minors has trended upward since the 2019 surge of migrants, the El Paso Sector noted.

Organizations who recruit migrants for smuggling tend to convince them to pose as single minors, who under the administration of President Joe Biden are exempt from Title 42 and can’t be returned to Mexico or their countries of origin.

According to the lates U.S. Customs and Border Protection southwestern border report, El Paso Sector agents have encountered 12,238 of the 85,688 unaccompanied children who have been stopped for illegally border crossing since October 1, 2021. 

‘El Paso Sector agents are working tirelessly to identify and prosecute adult migrants who fraudulently claim to be unaccompanied minors,’ said El Paso Sector Border Patrol chief Gloria I. Chavez. ‘Our teamwork with our U.S. partners and Foreign Consulates focuses on keeping other migrant children, while in our custody, safe from adult imposters.’ 

U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector agents have encountered 12,238 of the 84,235 unaccompanied children who have been stopped for illegally border crossing since October 1, 2021

Yery Noel Medina Ulloa lied to U.S. Border agents about his name and said he was 17 before he was stopped for unlawful border entry late this summer. Authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, revealed his identity and age, 24, after he was arrested October 7 for killing 46-year-old Francisco Javier Cuellar, who took him into his home and provided him a job at his family-operated business

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One imposter who was able circumvented the federal immigration agency was Yery Noel Medina Ulloa, 24, pleaded not guilty November 4 to second-degree murder and evidence tampering charges in Jacksonville, Florida, after he was arrested October 7 in the fatal stabbing of 46-year-old Francisco Javier Cuellar. 

At the time of his arrest, Medina Ulloa provided officers a fake name – Reynel Alexander Hernández – and said he was 17. 

It took authorities nearly a week to verify his real name and age after CBP got a response from the Honduran consulate.

U.S. Border Patrol officers have encountered 85,688 unaccompanied children at the southwestern border since October 1, 2021

Asylum-seeking migrants, predominately from Latin American countries, wade across the Rio Grande river from Piedras Negras in Mexico, to Eagle Pass, Texas on Sunday, a day before Title 42 was set to be lifted. A federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s move to lift Title 42 on Friday, a Trump-era policy used to expel more than one million migrants at the southern border

A group of migrants stand next to the border wall as a Border Patrol agent takes a head count in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Saturday

In an interview with Univision, his mother, Wendy Florencia Ulloa, said her son  entered the U.S. using another name so that he could be placed in a shelter for minors. 

A police report showed that Medina Ulloa has been in the U.S. for two months and was staying at Cuellar’s home. He gave Ulloa a job at his family-run store. 

While it’s unknown how Ulloa ended up at Cuellar’s home, his daughter told the New York Post that he had gone to the airport to pick Ulloa up. She thought Ulloa may have been on one of the several flights used by the Biden administration to resettle migrants.

‘My dad told me one day he was going to the airport, and then this guy came out of nowhere and was at work the next day,’ MaryCarmen Cuellar said.