Smugglers are steering migrants into the remote Arizona desert, posing new Border Patrol challenges

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — Border Patrol agents ordered the young Senegalese men to wait in the scant shade of desert scrub brush while they loaded a more vulnerable group of migrants — a family with three young children from India — into a white van for the short trip in triple-degree heat to a canopied field intake center. A family of five claiming to be from Guatemala and a man stating he was from Peru, in pink shirt, walk through the desert after crossing the border wall in the Tucson Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Lukeville, Ariz. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that the Tucson Sector is the busiest area of the border since 2008 due to smugglers abruptly steering migrants from Africa, Asia and other places through some of the Arizona borderlands’ most desolate and dangerous areas. The migrants were among hundreds who have been trudging this summer in the scorching sun and through open storm gates in the border wall to U.S. soil, following a remote corridor in the sprawling Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that’s among the most desolate and dangerous areas in the Arizona borderlands. During a recent visit, Associated Press journalists saw close to 100 migrants arrive in just four hours at the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona, inside Organ Pipe, as temperatures hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit.