EL PASO, Texas — "These people came, and I heard something," said La Joya resident Ruberto Cantu. 

"These people," Cantu references, are what Border Patrol would consider encounters; migrants, people who cross the Rio Grande into the United States without permission.

A week ago, Cantu was startled by noises outside his home near the La Palomas Wildlife Management Area. The region is a hotspot for illegal entries streaming from Mexico.

"I came out. I heard my dog barking,"said Cantu. "I came out the other way. I stepped back so I could see under the house."

At 1 a.m., he saw shadows of men he suspected were recent migrant arrivals hiding below the crawl space of his home.

Customs and Border Protection in the United States reports there were 234,088 migrant encounters at the border in April, a 45% increase over the previous month.Those numbers show a 22-year high for encounters.

Cantu’s recent discovery below his house helped increase CBP’s statistics.

The local resident recalls how he dealt with what he described as a tense situation.

"So, I have my pistol in my holster and I call them out. And I did call them out." 

The property owner says he expected two or three people to crawl from beneath. Then he started counting.

"I asked how many were there? They said ‘three,’ and then I saw four, and I saw five. It turns out that there were 23 individuals down there."

From what he could tell in the dark of the night, the uninvited visitors were men. 

CBP reports 71% of all southwest land border encounters were single adults in April or with 166,814 encounters, which represents a 2% decrease compared to March.

Cantu said he called La Joya police. At the same time, the migrants surfaced from below the crawl space and began to flee.

"By the time they started running, La Joya police arrived, and they caught a couple of them," he said, "The National Guard came. They wanted to clear the property and they got three more to come out from under the house."

Cantue was able to count 26 migrants in total. 

He said the encounter has his family unnerved and worried as illegal entries continue to rise in his small Rio Grande Valley town.

"We cannot trust people like that when they come into your property and try to hide," said Cantu.