Border officials in Arizona have noticed an increase in the number of migrants from Guinea attempting to cross into the United States through Arizona using fake passports and falsely claiming their status as minors.
According to an internal memo from the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector Intelligence Unit, these individuals are deliberately modifying their ages on passports to pose as unaccompanied minors, thereby enhancing their chances of gaining entry into the U.S.
The memo noted, “Officials from the Guinean government may be advising people obtaining new passports that they can change their age for them to have a better chance of entering the United States as minors.”
It added, “It’s suspected that Guinean passports issued in Conakry after June of 2023 are most likely fraudulent or altered.”
Additionally, there are reports of an illicit group stealing blank passport books from the Guinean ministry and distributing them without following proper procedures.
The scale of this issue became evident when nearly 170 Guinean nationals were reported to have crossed through the Tucson sector on a single day, according to information provided by a source in Border Patrol to Fox News.
This situation is causing growing concern among U.S. officials.
Chad Wolf, the former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, expressed his worries in an interview with Fox & Friends stating, “Any time that you have such overwhelming numbers…it overwhelms the border patrol, and so the smugglers and the cartels, they know this.”
He explained that these groups provide instructions to individuals on how to circumvent border controls, which may involve altering passports.
Wolf concluded by lamenting the system’s current state, describing it as “broken.”
The U.S. southern border continued to witness an unprecedented surge in illegal migrant encounters last month, breaking previous records.
Preliminary Homeland Security statistics reveal that border authorities encountered over 225,000 migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in the past month, marking the highest monthly total since 2000.
