As border officers and aid workers respond to a high number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving at the Lukeville Port of Entry, another humanitarian disaster is brewing along a different remote stretch of the Arizona-Sonora border. 

In recent weeks, dozens and sometimes hundreds of migrants have gathered along a gap in the border wall about 15 miles from the Sasabe Port of Entry. 

Tucson aid worker Dora Rodriguez says some are waiting there for days before finding a Border Patrol agent.

"You know, children dehydrated, children that have not eaten for three days, they haven’t had a bottle for a couple of days, babies. ... It’s because they’re being held by smugglers on the Mexican side," she said. 

Rodriguez says smugglers are taking migrants deep into the mountains east of Sasabe, Mexico, and forcing them to wait for days before sending them across the border. Her Sasabe-based aid center was forced to close in October amid a spike in violence from organized crime. She says she and other aid workers have been sounding the alarm for months about migrants trying to present to border officers for asylum along the wall near the twin communities of Sasabe, Sonora and Sasabe, Arizona.

A CBP spokesperson said migrants have been found there, along a rugged stretch of the border east of the port of entry that takes 45 minutes to access by car.