TUCSON — Another group of mostly Guatemalan asylum seekers breached the U.S.-Mexico border south of Yuma on Monday night, this time with the help of a smuggler using a ladder to scale the border fence and get the migrants to the U.S. side.

Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday released security-camera footage of the incident on Wednesday involving 118 migrants. About 86 percent of them were families traveling together, the agency said.

The video shows several migrants dropping to the ground, after scaling the 18-foot-tall, bollard-style fence, in an area about three miles east of the San Luis commercial border crossing.

As the group drops one by one to the ground, they huddle into a group, as a Border Patrol agent watches on from inside his vehicle.

At the end of the 55-second clip, after the last migrant is on the ground on the U.S. side, the camera zooms in to a figure running away from the border fence on the Mexican side. The figure has what appears to be a ladder on his back.

"It shows how brazen these smugglers are and the fact that they're unafraid," said Jose Garibay, the Border Patrol's Yuma Sector spokesman.

"They know that we're not gonna go into Mexico to apprehend them," Garibay said. "So once he puts up that ladder, gets his commodity — in which he looks at these humans — in the United States, then he takes down his ladder, and as you saw in the video, just walks back to wherever he hid the ladder and continues on with his day.

"It's presumable that this individual has done it more than once."

CBP said Border Patrol agents responded immediately to the breach. Once across the border, migrants turned themselves in for processing.

Monday's breach happened about a mile from where 376 asylum seekers dug holes to tunnel under the bollard fence last week. That group was the single, largest group that agents had encountered in the area, according to CBP.

On Wednesday, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., visited the area where the migrants burrowed under the fence during her first visit to the Yuma area as an appointed member of the U.S. Senate.

While the use of the ladder by the smuggler to get migrants over the fence on Monday is likely to generate criticism, Garibay defended the use of walls or physical barriers along the border.

Height can be a deterrence, he said.

Garibay noted that the Yuma Sector is slated to receive at least 27 miles of upgraded pedestrian fencing. The first 14 miles will be replaced starting in April. Those new barriers will measure 30 feet in height; existing fencing measures about 18 feet tall.

"Those saying that if we build a 30-foot wall, that you'll build a 31-foot ladder, and it's not true," he said. "Because you'll need two 31-foot ladders because you not only have to go up, but you have to come down on the other side. And as you saw, it is a long drop from 18 feet."

It remains unclear if the area where migrants breached the fence on Monday will be part of the 27 miles slated for replacement. But Garibay said the new barriers will also include concrete footers to avoid incidents similar to what happened last week when migrants tunneled underneath fencing.

The number of asylum-seeking families and minors reaching the Yuma area has been on the rise in the past two years, reaching record apprehension levels not seen in almost a decade.

Statistics for December and January are unavailable because of the ongoing partial government shutdown, which has affected the communication offices at Border Patrol sectors nationwide.

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