1,000 migrants enter Yuma County in last week

Approximately 1,000 migrants have entered the Yuma area in the last week seeking asylum.

This is an influx that Yuma Sector Border Patrol has not seen in more than a decade.

None of the migrants were a part of the migrant caravan making its way through Mexico, according to Justin Kallinger, Yuma Sector Border Patrol.

“That does show that we don’t need a large caravan in order to have large numbers of people crossing into America, other than Mexicans, from Central America. We’ve had like you said over 1,000 in the last week or so, which is quite alarming. In a sense, we haven’t seen these kinds of numbers since 2005, 2006,” said Kallinger.

One instance happened Monday night as 55 migrants crossed into the Yuma Sector near County 9th Street.

Most of those crossing are families, according to Border Patrol.

Border Patrol confirmed to News 11 that some of the migrants are being held in a local detention center.

They want the community to know that they are doing their best to continue to achieve their goal to apprehend every person entering the country illegally.

“We want the community to know just like I said that we are here for them. That we’re doing our best. That we can’t control what laws, what rules, what policies, we do on a day to day basis, but we’re here for them,” said Kallinger.

Jose Yepez, mayor of Somerton, agreed. He explained that he has not made any changes to the security of his city.

“We don’t see them camping on our streets. We don’t see them walking around in our neighborhoods. To us it’s normal business as usual,” said Mayor Yepez.

Mayor Yepez added that he has been in contact with other area mayors.

“To us, yes we’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on out there but at this time we haven’t seen anything that changes out of our ordinary day to day operations,” said Mayor Yepez.