doing anything wrong. el paso city police a few minutes ago to tell us that their arrest were from a violation of criminal law, although they didn t get into details on why that was. migrant advocates have said the since this has been in such close proximity to a church, they don t like to see this. the memo according to a colleague, judy ainsley, back in 21. dhs secretary says migrants should not be arrested near places of warship, or near court houses. in this case it is happening. it is happening in the context of a presidential visit. president biden set to touch down in el paso in just a short time. alex, the biden administration says that the number of unauthorized border crossings has dropped significantly from mid december. it is not about 7% according to the biden administration. last week, of course president biden announced a series of changes to policy meant to
but then you ve got to come up with a system that people know what works, that is an arbitrary, isn t whimsical, i can tell you doing casework, immigration has maybe one of the most pressing issues i deal with and it is also one of the most frustrating because it is whimsical. decisions get made an arbitrary basis, they don t get made on a humane basis, and as a result, people don t have confidence in the system. you ve got to restore that confidence. and when you do, i believe, you reduce the incentive to come here illegally. congressman, as we continue looking at the left of the screen here and we see more migrants being arrested thereby presumably el paso city police, that is what gave gutierrez was able to determine as he is right on the scene there. i m going to ask you stay with me sir, we are going to go to capitol hill right now and ask a question right now about the business of the new republican-led house. that begins tomorrow, and next on the agenda, of course, the new hou
mid december, there has been a sharp reduction in the number of one-off border crossings here in el paso. that is down 70% from mid december, when we were here several weeks ago, there was that rather significant minor influx were hundreds or more than 1000 at a time we re trying to cross from lake where as to el paso. we now see what s going on right now. that appears to be el paso city police at least taking some of the blankets and some of the encampments that we have seen here overnight. again, this is happening just hours before president biden is set to touch down here for his first presidential visit at the border since taking office. now republicans have long blasted the biden administration for not visiting the border and for what they say are lax immigration policies that are leading to this influx of migrants. the biden administration is backing republicans, they are
we now have a panel of reporters, analysts, and elected officials joining us to go over today s major developments. we begin with dave gutierrez and el paso, texas. gabe, last hour when we checked, and we watched migrants being taken into police custody. what are you seeing there now? hi there, alex. good afternoon. well, there are still many migrants here, as you can see. the arrests, at least for now, have stopped. to give you some perspective of where we are, in case you missed it this last hour, we are here in sacred heart church in el paso. this is a place where, last week, federal officials officers came and took several migrants into custody. this morning it was el paso city police that arrested six migrants, we are told. at least some of them were from venezuela. it is unclear exactly why they were erected. when i spoke to one of them live on the air he said that he was counting money. he was picked up, he denied