Border Patrol reassures that Foothills hotel is being used for men and women in uniform

Buses are for transportation to other sectors - 13 On Your Side's Arlette Yousif reports

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - Unmarked buses and border patrol vehicles outside the best western hotel in the foothills caused concern among residents once again… but it’s not what it looks like.

Holding facilities in the Yuma Sector has been over capacity for an extended period of time… so much so that border patrol brought in reinforcements from other sectors.

Yuma Sector Border Patrol reassures that the hotel is being used for men and women in uniform.

"That particular hotel is being used by agents and border prisons personnel. They’re helping us with our mission here and kind of coordinating transport and other duties associated with the detainees," says Yuma Sector Border Patrol Supervisor Vincent Dulesky.

But what about the buses?

"The buses and the vehicles that border patrol are using or associated with it are just being stored there, parked there. When they get done at night, they can park them in there. They can wake up, they can go get their vehicle and then drive them on to where they’re going to do their duties," explains Dulesky.

All this is due to overcrowding at local holding facilities for an extended period of time.

"Mainly to transport large groups that we find on the border to our processing areas and our holding areas," says Dulesky.

At any given moment, Yuma Sector holding facilities have about 3,000 undocumented immigrants. They are only supposed to be at 1,100 capacity.

"We do have them being transported to other sectors for further processing so that it can alleviate the numbers that we currently have in our processing centers," explains Dulesky.

Although apprehensions this past weekend were lower than usual, agents have been using this time to catch up on the backlog of processing asylum seekers.