2019 was a record year in the San Antonio District of Homeland Security for arrests and apprehensions, according to figure released by the agency, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Special Agent Shane Folden says a lot of the increase is due to the immigration surge. The San Antonio District encompasses much of the border.
"Whether tt be false claims to U.S. citizenship, or using counterfeit documents, folks using documents from other individuals," he said.
The San Antonio field office arrested more than 33 thousand criminal suspects, took more than 200,000 illegal guns off the streets, and seized nearly 120,000.. pounds of drugs were seized.
Folden says the 'family fraud' case, which entails people using illegal documents or using documents meant for other people resulted in a boost of personnel for the region this year.
"To address some of the family fraud, we have a lot of folks which have been send down from some of the interior offices and sent down here on temporary detail."
Folden says a major problem rooted out by HSI this past year was people using documents for children, to make it look like they were traveling with a chld as a 'family unit. That would make it more likely that the individual would be moved into another category of asylum seeker, due largely t the outcry over 'the separation of families on the border,' even though a large umber of the 'families' aren't famies at all.
"We started the DNA testing as well, as part of the family fraud .".:a it if these arrests are a part of that focus."