id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> It had all the makings of an old-fashioned Texas standoff.
Hundreds of state troopers and US Border Patrol agents sat behind the wheels of black SUVs and green-and-white pickups facing the Rio Grande, their eyes fixed on the jade-colored water. A helicopter buzzed low overhead, winding along the bends of the river, while agents in a swamp boat cruised below. Four men, wearing army green uniforms and cowboy hats, rode horses up the shore, guns at the ready.
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Amy Kim/CNET It was a quiet February morning, and all these law enforcement officers in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border town about a seven-and-a-half hour drive southeast of El Paso, were waiting for one thing: immigrants.
Across the river, in the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, a caravan of about 1,800 Central American immigrants, including families with young children, had arrived at the start of the month -- the first such caravan to make it to the Texas border. They had trekked more than 1,500 miles to ask the United States government for asylum. Most said they were escaping threats of violence and death in their home countries.
"Everyone is leaving because it's dangerous. The gangs have taken over all the neighborhoods," Oeli Zuniga, 26, a Honduran immigrant traveling with her 7-year-old daughter, tells me. "We do this for our kids, so they can be in a country without so much crime and so many ugly things taking place."
In preparation for the caravan's arrival, the US had beefed up border security. Under the direction of President Donald Trump, the Pentagon sent 250 active-duty military troops. Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent 500 officers from the Department of Public Safety. And US Customs and Border Protection outfitted its local agents with cement traffic barriers, riot gear and spools of concertina wire. That's in addition to the high-tech cameras, sensors and radar tracking tools already in place to help monitor the 1,200 miles of Texas' border with Mexico.
Law enforcement lined the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, in anticipation of a migrant caravan that arrived across the river days earlier.
James Martin/CNET By the end of March, Trump declared he was cutting all foreign aid, approximately $450 million, to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala -- collectively known as the Northern Triangle. He also said he'd close the nearly 2,000-mile US southern border if Mexico didn't do something about the migrants heading north. On Sunday, Kirstjen Nielsen, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, resigned as the president said he wants to go in a "tougher direction" on immigration.
A "colossal surge" of people is entering the US and "overwhelming" the immigration system, Trump said after a visit to a California border town last week. And Customs and Border Protection confirmed it apprehended more than 100,000 immigrants on the southwest border in March, double the number for the same time period last year.
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"We can't take you anymore," said Trump, whose grandfather was a 16-year-old German immigrant. "We can't take you. Our country is full."
Then, changing his position on Friday, the president tweeted that he's "giving strong considerations" to placing migrants in mostly Democratic "sanctuary cities," a move Democrats called a politically motivated stunt.