EAGLE PASS, Texas – The U.S. Customs and Border Protection officially closed a temporary processing facility in Eagle Pass, Texas, this week.
In an Instagram post, Acting Chief Border Patrol Agent Milton Moreno said the soft-sided processing center, otherwise known as “Firefly,” closed on Tuesday due to a decrease in apprehensions along the Texas-Mexico border.
Agents who worked at the facility will be re-assigned to work in field operations, Moreno said.
The 153,000-square-foot facility opened in July 2022. The facility was built with a mass capacity of 1,000 people.
The facility’s purpose was “to safely and expeditiously process individuals in U.S. Border Patrol custody,” officials said at the time it opened.
CBP said the shelter replaced a smaller facility in Eagle Pass, as the border experienced an increase of people crossing from Mexico into Texas at the time.
Apprehensions on the border have since decreased, according to a new report from CBP.
Apprehensions averaged about 330 per day in February — the lowest average in CBP history, the report stated. Detentions along the Southwest border specifically dropped to less than 300 per day.
In February, USBP apprehended:
- 8,347 immigrants who crossed between ports of entry on the Southwest border.
- 3,362 inadmissible immigrants at ports of entry along the Southwest border.
In January, USBP apprehended:
- 29,101 immigrants who crossed between ports of entry on the Southwest border.
- 32,346 inadmissible immigrants at ports of entry along the Southwest border.
CBP attributed the drop in apprehensions to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
In January, Trump signed a series of executive orders that included forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico and finishing the border wall. Other orders launched sweeping new strategies, like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America and end the use of a President Joe Biden-era app used by nearly one million migrants to enter America.
The Trump Administration will reopen a federal immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, that was previously used to hold families.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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