NRA ANNUAL MEETING — DALLAS, Texas — Border Patrol agents in the Laredo Sector arrested an additional 15 Bangladeshi nationals this week. This brings the total number of Bangladeshi nationals arrested in the Laredo Sector this year to 224.

Border Patrol officials attending the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting in Dallas told Breitbart Texas on Friday that the Laredo Sector alone as arrested more than 60 percent of all of the Bangladeshi nationals arrested along the southwest U.S. border with Mexico. So far this year, more than 360 Bangladeshi nationals have been arrested for illegal entry.

“When we talk about the different groups that are crossing into an area, what we’re trying to draw attention to is a more comprehensive look at our threat picture,” Acting Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens told Breitbart Texas during a recent interview. “We need to stay away from just focusing on the family units and Unaccompanied Alien Children that are coming from Central America and Mexico. What the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol are dealing with on a daily basis is so much more complex than that.”

“You have to look not only at the numbers of folks coming across in our Area of Responsibility (AOR),” Owens explained, “but also, who they are and where they’re from because that very much affects how we meet the threat.”

Breitbart Texas spoke with several officials from the Laredo Sector at the NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, on Friday. From frontline agents to the sector chief, the Border Patrol agents expressed concern about the increasing numbers of Bangladeshi nationals crossing the border.

Of the more than 360 Bangladeshi nationals who have crossed the U.S. southern border illegally, more than 300 have entered in Texas, officials stated.

Laredo Sector Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Gabriel Acosta told Breitbart Texas on Thursday that the Bangladeshi nationals do not pick their point of entry into the U.S.

“That is determined by the transnational criminal organization (TCO) that works with the smugglers from the country of origin, into South America, up through Central America, and into Mexico,” Acosta explained. “They are paying upward of $27,000 each to be smuggled into the U.S.”

The illegal crossings by these foreign nationals proves-up a point that Border Patrol agents have been telling Breitbart Texas for years. That being that there is a direct pipeline from countries with connections to terrorism to South American and then north where drug cartels are paid large sums of cash to smuggle them across the border.

Chief Owens told Breitbart Texas that all of the Bangladeshi nationals are men — mostly between the ages of 18-35.