Days after President Joe Biden saw a sanitized version of the southern border in Texas, officials said the same thing had happened in Arizona just as senators were due to arrive on a factfinding mission.
The bipartisan group led by Sen. Kirsten Sinema arrived in Yuma on Tuesday morning.
Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines said border crossings had dropped to almost nothing amid tighter activity on the Mexican side, while discarded shoes, medicine bottles and other evidence of illegal crossings had been removed from along the U.S. side.
'Everything's been 100% sanitized here as well. Even more so than they've ever done before. And we're actually not even seeing people coming across the border right now,' he said.
'It's interesting because I've had several congressional delegations come to Yuma and the unannounced delegations always see the real border challenge, not the publicized ones.'
Twenty days ago, a holding area for migrants along the wall outside Yuma, Arizona, teemed with about 400 overnight arrivals. On Tuesday morning, it was deserted
The surge in border arrivals has ended for now, just as a bipartisan group of senators led by Texas Republican John Cornyn and Arizona independent Kirsten Sinema arrive for a visit
Yuma was one of the crossing hotspots at the end of last year. Encounters surged by more than 30 percent, according to local officials, as migrants anticipated the end of Title 42.
More than 200 migrants at a time could be seen at a holding position beside Donald Trump's 30-foot border wall, waiting for transportation to a processing center.
Things were so bad that Yuma officials declared an emergency and came close to releasing detainees directly on to the city's streets.
But at mid-morning on Tuesday, there were no migrants to be seen at the same holding position.
Lines said the senators would see little to help them understand the nature of the crisis.
'It's a lie,' he said.
'They're misrepresenting what's actually happening at the border.
'Every single time there's a high profile visit, this is par for the course, so that people never get to see what it looks like.'
A tent to protect arrivals from the baking sun was also empty on Tuesday - despite being a busy scene last month, as hundreds of migrants arrived every day
Local officials in December said the numbers surged by more than 30 percent in just a week, driven by the belief that Title 42 - a Trump-era restriction on migrants - had been lifted
THEN: A busy area where migrants waited beside Trump's wall for transportation
NOW: Nobody. The absence of migrants has triggered complaints that the senators will see a sanitised version of the border - just as President Joe Biden did in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday
He said the same thing happened when Department of Homeland Security Security Alejandro Mayorkas visited. This time, he added, he was compiling a collection of photos and videos to illustrate the true picture.
During their tour, the senators — who include Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican who led the Texas leg of the two-day trip — will see gaps in the wall, left after shipping containers, which plugged holes, were removed last week
The area is close to the Morelos Dam, which diverts water from the Colorado River, where coyotes — or smugglers — drop migrants with instructions to head for the wall where they will be picked up by Border Patrol.
Lines said the river was running high at the moment, also deterring people from crossing.
'After we see everyone leaves and the Colorado River recedes then we will start seeing more people walking across the border. At the dam like we had seen previously. numbers will gradually climb back up. '
The gaps in the
His criticism echoes concerns in El Paso, where local officials said migrants were swept from the streets ahead of Biden's visit.
Texas also deployed the National Guard last month to lay two miles of razor wire, strengthening border defenses.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, slammed President Joe Biden's visit to the southern border on Sunday, saying he did not get a full picture of the crisis
Biden on Sunday made his first visit to the southern border since becoming president. White House officials have been able to point to one other visit during his career in politics
In December, this area was filled with migrants sleeping on the streets. Bon Saturday, the same streets had no sign of the migrants who had camped there after a clearance operation
Border Patrol union chief Brandon Judd said his members were furious about the visit.
'Every single Border Patrol agent that I've spoken with is extremely frustrated and upset about what just took place yesterday,' he said on Monday.
'They are upset that he was not willing to see what's actually going on. They're upset that they cleaned everything up.
'They're upset that him knowing that he was going to bring the mainstream media with them, that we all of a sudden doubled the number of agents in the field so the mainstream media would say: "Hey, there's nothing going on here, nothing to see.'
Judd said Biden did not meet any migrants and the tour amounted to nothing more than 'optics.'
'He didn't tour any facilities where migrants would have been,' he said. 'So he didn't see anything.
'He did not see any of the chaos that he's created, that he's caused.'
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