The Department of Homeland Security of the United States of America is gathering information from the paid undercover informants in the migrant caravan that is now arriving to the border of California and Mexico, in addition of monitoring text messages of the migrants, according to two officials of DHS.

The 4,000 migrants, mainly from Honduras, have been part of group text messaging on WhatsApp as a way to organize and communicate throughout their journey to California, and the staff of DHS have joined these groups to gather this information.

The techniques of intelligence-gathering are combined with the DHS staff reports that work in Mexico with the government, with the objective to control the amount of migrants, their movements and any possible security risk.

The DHS officials communicated with the regional news reporters, that their intelligence have reported on Sunday night about a group of migrants who wanted to run through the ports of entry near San Diego. As a result, the US Customs and Border Protection closed all the lines of the ports of entry between 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. However, the ambush was never completed.

The payment of the informants, the placement of officials in the region or monitoring of non-American citizens’ communications is not legal, said John Cohen, former DHS deputy secretary of intelligence units, but it does create concern regarding the allocation of resources.

"Those resources have to come from some place. They are not being devoted to thwarting terrorist threats, mass shootings, mailed fentanyl coming into the country or cyberattacks," said Cohen.

Cohen mentioned that the caravan has a logistical and humanitarian problem, but due to the large majority of its members wanting to present themselves legally to ask for political asylum, it is not prudent to aim a significant amount of intelligence units into this.

“It is hard for me to believe the highest risk that our nation faces come from the caravan”, Cohen said.

It is not known how much money DHS is using for intelligence-gathering inside the caravan.

In a statement by Katie Waldman, DHS spokesperson, said: “While not commenting on sources or methods, it would be malpractice for the United States to be ignorant about the migrants — including many criminals — attempting to enter our country. We have an obligation to ensure we know who is crossing our borders to protect against threats to the Homeland and any indication to the contrary is misinformed."

Via: News