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While hundreds of thousands of poor migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. have trekked on foot from South and Central America in the last eight months, there has also been a rise in middle class migrants flooding the southern border.
These so-called middle class migrants often fly to Mexico's northern border on pre-planned flights and cross into the U.S. by cab or another car hire, a Border Patrol chief in Arizona told the Wall Street Journal.
'They got off the plane and went to a cab or to a bus,' Chris Clem, Border Patrol's chief patrol agent in Yuma, said.
'They literally were driven up and just walked up and turned themselves over to us,' he said in describing the last leg of more affluent migrants' trip over the U.S.-Mexico border.
Clem said that his team regularly encounters migrants who claim they took flights to a northern Mexican border city before crossing illegally into the U.S.
These middle class migrants also spent less time in shelters than their poorer counterparts.
While many migrants from more poor countries, like Haiti and Northern Triangle Nations, are seeking asylum in the