As the immigration crisis on the border continues, it's important for us to take a trip down memory lane and remember exactly where the majority of America's 10.7 million illegal aliens are residing. It's not surprising that the big hubs are in metropolitan areas, especially ones that have declared themselves "sanctuary cities." The other not surprising tidbit: the largest populations are in California, Phoenix and Texas, along the southern border.
.@pewresearch put together a map of the 20 metro areas where 6 in 10 illegal aliens live. pic.twitter.com/Gz0sWsoPTZ
— Beth Baumann (@eb454) June 1, 2019
The areas aren't all that surprising: pic.twitter.com/65RwACFrYf
— Beth Baumann (@eb454) June 1, 2019
It's important to remember this was released back in March.
The nation’s unauthorized immigrant population is highly concentrated, more so than the U.S. population overall. In 2016, the 20 metro areas with the most unauthorized immigrants were home to 6.5 million of them, or 61% of the estimated nationwide total. By contrast, only 37% of the total U.S. population lived in those metro areas.
The number of unauthorized immigrants in these 20 metros has declined sharply since 2007, when 7.7 million of them lived in these areas. These metro areas account for much of a national decline of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population over the past decade.
We're now facing an unprecedented number of people illegally crossing our border. They know that they can walk up to a Border Patrol agent, say, "I want to see an immigration judge" and then they're released into the United States.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol have said their facilities are overwhelmed and the system is severely broken. Places like Murrieta, California, where residents stood up and said illegal aliens would not be dumped in their communities, are bracing themselves for round two.
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This is no longer just an issue that's facing the southern border. This is something that's impacting all of America, including flyover states. The Border Patrol stations along the southern border are so overwhelmed that the Department of Homeland Security has started, once again, to fly illegal aliens to stations further north of the border so that they can be processed and then released into our communities.
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