Video: Ride along with Border Patrol at southern border
Border Patrol Agent Orlando Marrero oversees the area of Sunland Park, the southern-most part of New Mexico.
"The area we're going, there's not a border wall. There's not a permanent infrastructure," Marrero said. "If you cross into Mexico and you come back, I have to detain you. Because you just made an illegal entry."
He also said the public has a common misconception about the southern border.
鈥淧eople think that the border is actually the wall. It is not,鈥� Marrero said.
The BP agent also reflected on how it wasn鈥檛 long ago when they would detain hundreds of migrants crossing the open desert from Mexico.
"You would have seen them crossing where there's no vehicle barrier," Marrero said. "You would see them crossing where there's no border wall. You would have seen climbing the wall into the United States."
Marrero has noticed a change in the policy of releasing migrants shortly after being detained by border protective services.
Before President Trump was sworn in, when someone was caught, agents would provide them a cell phone or an ankle monitor, along with a date to appear in immigration court.
Often those migrants were not heard from again. Marrero explains how the process is now working during these encounters.
"Before we were doing the policy of catch and subsequently release, that's no more the practice," Marrero said. "We are making sure that our message gets across. If you come into the country, if you enter the United States in an illegal manner between ports of entry, we are going to detain you, we're going to arrest you, and we're going to put you in removal proceedings to your country of origin."