Feds Claim NYC Mayor Crossed Border Illegally

Customs and Border Protection is calling out an unlikely person for crossing the nation's southern border illegally: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio and his security detail, run by the NYPD, violated both Mexican and US immigration laws by crossing the border on foot during a visit near El Paso, Texas, the agency alleges in a letter obtained by the AP. The mayor's office flatly denied the allegation. De Blasio, a fierce critic of the Trump administration's immigration policies, went to the Texas border with about 20 other mayors from around the country on June 21, the day after President Trump signed an order stopping family separations at the border. De Blasio went to a holding facility for immigrant children but was denied entry. He then went to Mexico and crossed into the US to get a view of the facility.

According to the June 25 letter, a uniformed Border Patrol agent noticed a group on the Rio Grande River flood plain south of the Tornillo, Texas, Port of Entry. The agent asked if anyone from Border Patrol or public affairs was there to authorize their presence. An NYPD inspector said no, according to the letter, and when the agent asked the group how they arrived, they pointed to Mexico. The agent told them they'd crossed the border illegally and asked them to remain there while he got a supervisor and took them to an official crossing for an inspection per federal law, according to the letter. But the group disregarded the order and drove back to Mexico, the letter claims. A De Blasio rep says the group did nothing illegal and had approval to be there from "the border patrol supervisor at this port of entry. Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie." (More Bill de Blasio stories.)