U.S. singles out Senegal for legal action for helping illegal migrants at borders with Mexico

Troy A. Miller, a senior official of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has finger-pointed Senegal for housing “Pseudo-legitimate” travel agencies that allegedly propose illegal migrants visa-free travel to Europe and then to the US via Mexico, now used as transit by thousands to enter the American territory.

Miller said travel agencies in Senegal’s capital city of Dakar are promoting visa-free travel to Europe, and then to Mexico.
Once in Mexico, Miller also stressed, the customers are connected to a smuggling organization that will help them cross the southern US border illegally. “They sell complete packages to connect them to a smuggling organization that will then facilitate their movement up to the border,” he also explained.

“CBP is working with partners throughout the hemisphere and around the world to really make sure that we are bolstering people’s access to protections in the right ways and taking action to prevent people from trying to exploit different travel mechanisms,” he added.
The U.S. is struggling to contain increasing arrivals of millions of migrants crossing the border with Mexico.

Arrests of migrants from countries such as Senegal, Mauritania, China, and India entering via Mexico ballooned to 214,000 during the 2023 fiscal year, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

The number was triple the number of migrant “encounters” from Asia and Africa in fiscal year 2022, which was 70,000, according to CBP statistics.

Senegalese people, New York Post reports, accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson, Ariz., from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, where agents have encountered migrants from about four dozen Eastern hemisphere countries.