SOUTH BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — A spokesperson for the United States Customs and Border Protection announced that 13 undocumented individuals from Mexico and Nicaragua were arrested on Monday during traffic stops in South Buffalo.
According to the spokesperson, agents patrolling near Tifft Street and Route 5 encountered two vans with North Carolina plates and conducted simultaneous traffic stops. The occupants of both vehicles, 12 men and one woman, were arrested after failing to provide immigration documentation.
It is alleged that the undocumented individuals traveled from North Carolina to work $14-per-hour jobs without authorization to work in the United States.
"These arrests can be attributed to our increased situational awareness and the diligence of our agents," said Patrol Agent in Charge David Banks. "It also illustrates how some undocumented individuals can be enticed to travel with promises of work when they are not able to legally work in the U.S."
Six of the undocumented individuals were processed for removal and detained. Six additional undocumented individuals, previously arrested by agents at the southwest border, were ordered to report as originally instructed. The remaining undocumented individual was previously removed from the United States and was processed again for reinstatement of the original removal order.
Rossana Berardi, managing partner of Berardi Immigration Law, said she's not surprised by this.
"Which to me, is proof positive that our system is really broken," Berardi said. "We have a very large porous border on both sides of the country, North and South. The South gets more attention, but the North is becoming a problem as well."
She said the United State had a record number of people enter in 2023.
"Over 2 million really, really high numbers. So this is going to happen, right? We're going to have people that kind of bucked the system and they need to work," she said.
