Border Patrol agents have seen a significant uptick in the number of migrants from Bangladesh attempting to illegally cross from Mexico into Texas at the Laredo Sector this year, and say Latin American drug cartels are charging each person as much as $27,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.

At a little more than halfway through fiscal year 2018, agents have already caught 183 Bangladeshi nationals trying to break into the U.S., more than the 180 caught in all of the last fiscal year, a sector spokesman told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, four Bangladeshis were arrested by Border Patrol after illegally crossing the Rio Grande River north into Laredo.

Sixty percent of all illegal immigrants who made the 8,500-mile trip from Asia to the U.S. in fiscal year 2017 were apprehended by Border Patrol agents in and around Laredo.

Laredo Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Gabriel Acosta told the Washington Examiner that Bangladeshi nationals are not making the long trip alone, but through drug cartels that are willing to move human cargo all the way from Asia.

"They're flying into South America and from there they're taking various modes of transportation through Central America up to Mexico," Acosta said. "It's basically the [smuggling] organization that's bringing them across. They [the Bangladeshis] don't really decide where in the United States they're going to cross."
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