Texas bar owner says illegal immigrants hiding in his bathrooms: report

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Texas official: 204 COVID-positive migrants crossed the state's border since January

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on President Biden’s handling of the border.

A Texas owner of a bar situated on the southern border says the migrants are hiding in his bathrooms and trucks as they seek to evade authorities -- the latest sign of a surge at the southern border.

"When I go in the mornings, sometimes I go to do some work, there’s people in the bathroom; they hide in the bathrooms," Lupe Cabrera, who owns "Cabrera’s Bar" told National Review. "Me and my brother own a trucking company, too. They’ll hide in the trucks."

THE WORD THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WON'T USE WHEN IT COMES TO THE BORDER? 'CRISIS' 

The outlet reports the situation at the bar in Granjeno, along the Rio Grande, has become an almost daily occurrence. His bar is near the border wall -- of which President Biden halted construction -- and there is an unfinished section near Cabrera’s bar.

Cabrera told the outlet he has seen a migrant uptick in recent weeks, although it has long been a destination for migrants coming through.

"Most of the people I see are harmless," Cabrera told National Review, "but you never know what the hell’s going on, who’s crossing, or what."

The border has seen a dramatic uptick in migrants in recent weeks -- particularly unaccompanied children and family units.

BORDER ENCOUNTERS TOP 100,000 IN FEBRUARY AS MIGRANT CRISIS SPIRALS 

CBP encountered 100,441 individuals in February, a 28 percent increase over January, the agency said. Of those, 19,246 individuals were in family units; 9,457 were unaccompanied children (UACs) and 71,598 were single adults.

So far, encounters in FY 2021 to date is 97 percent higher than FY 2020 and 24 percent higher than FY 2019 -- when there was a crisis at the border. In FY 2021 through February, officials encountered 29,792 UACs and single minors -- over 3,000 of these children are under age of 12 and 26,850 are aged 13 to 17. 

Republicans have linked the surge to Biden’s policies -- which include ending the Migrant Protection Protocols and limiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests -- and described the situation as a crisis.

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The administration has pushed back on that assertion, and has called it a "challenge" but not a crisis as it seeks to reverse what it describes as cruel Trump-era policies.

"You know, I think the...I’m not trying to be cute here, but I think the fact of the matter is: We have to do what we do regardless of what anybody calls the situation," Roberta Jacobson, coordinator for the southern border, said in a press briefing Wednesday.

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"And the fact is, we are all focused on improving the situation, on changing to a more humane and efficient system.  And whatever you call it wouldn’t change what we’re doing because we have urgency, from the President on down, to fix our system and make sure that we are better at dealing with the hopes and the dreams of these migrants in their home country," she said.