This is intercepted.

My name is Maryam Saleh and I'm a features editor at the intercept.

Earlier this month intercept reporter Ryan DeVero traveled to southern Arizona where he visited a small rural border town called Aho.

There he witnessed a recent change in policy by the US Border Patrol which for the last couple of months has been dropping off asylum seeking migrants in tiny towns that have little resources.

And what he witnessed there is that this change in border patrol policies that's bringing people to towns like Aho is straining the human aid networks in an area that is one of the deadliest areas along the border.

Ryan spoke to intercepted lead producer Jack DeZadoro about his reporting.

The people who are being led in are unaccompanied children that is a policy decision which we made because we felt it was the most humane approach.

Are we looking at overcrowding at the border particular of these kids? Yes. This is however not going to be solved overnight.

The idea that I'm going to say which I would never do. The banana company child ends up with the border. We're just going to let them starve to death and stay on the other side. No previous administration to dead either except Trump. I'm not going to do it.

Over these past several weeks there's obviously been a ton of reporting about everything that's going on on the border. The apprehension of huge numbers of unaccompanied central American children.

These children have been moved into overcrowded facilities. There's been a lot of conversation about whether Biden is presiding over humanitarian crisis.

There's a number of Republicans who flew down to the valley and took a tour on gun boats down the Rio Grande want the world to believe.

What he did is created a human tsunami that's got to come to the United States. He didn't mean to but I don't think he understood.

But I decided to look into something a little different.

My name is Ryan DeVro and I'm a reporter at the intercept. I cover border and immigration enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security.

The border patrol in southern Arizona was beginning a practice of releasing somewhat significant numbers of asylum seekers into very rural, small,

border communities in southern Arizona that have really no resources to receive them.

The way that it had been done historically is the border patrol. They arrested people in the desert. They would take them to the custody at a local station.

And then those folks would generally be moved to a bigger city, somewhere like Tucson, for example.

What's happening now with the changes that started around mid-February is that the border patrol is basically terminating its custody of folks at the station level and then saying they are obligated under law to then release them at the nearest possible population center.

I recently flew down to the Arizona, Sonora, Mexico border and spent a few days interviewing folks at migrant shelters on both sides of the border.

Talking to people about what they're seeing, what they're experiencing, to try to get a sense of how these first few months of the Biden administration are playing out and how the community is responding to this pretty significant change policy.

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