Unlawful migrants showing up at the US border is very much a 'dog bites man' story. It's been happening literally thousands of times, every single day, throughout the Biden border crisis. Indeed, per the federal government's own statistics, "the number of migrants arrested at the US-Mexico border has already exceeded last year’s record — and is on pace to top 2 million for the first time ever," according to the New York Post (update: it's officially blown past 2 million, obliterating last year's record-shattering number of over 1.2 million encounters). Some partisan hacks try to spin such shocking failures as evidence that the border is secure, after all, due to all the apprehensions. This misses the key point that the system is overwhelmed because the incentive structure is attracting record crowds to illegally cross the border.
The word is out that people will be processed en masse, then released into America, often bussed or flown to the interior city of their choosing, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They know they have a strong chance of arriving and staying, so they're coming. Illegally. By the millions. And most of them want to get caught. The other key point that willfully ignored is that we are getting very close to one million known got-aways entering the United States and evading capture in the last two years alone (excluding an unknowable number of undetected got-aways). We are already north of 900,000 since the start of last year:
NEW: Border Patrol reports there were 819 known gotaways just in the Del Rio sector over the weekend.
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) August 16, 2022
There have been more than 500,000 known gotaways across the border since FY’22 began on 10/1.
There were about 400,000 known gotaways in all of FY’21.@FoxNews
Melugin also pointed out this week that US agents at the northern border have been dealing with an influx of individuals seeking to enter sovereign American territory illegally. When the magnet is strong enough, it attracts people from all directions, it seems:
Action on the U.S. northern border!
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) August 16, 2022
Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents in northeastern Vermont & New York report they arrested 12 people who crossed illegally, including migrants from Ireland, Italy, Cuba, Guatemala, & Mexico. Two human smuggling vehicles seized. @FoxNews
The obvious (illegal) track into America is through the porous southern border because Mexico is a chaotic state with haphazard law enforcement, at best. The cartels run the breathtaking-in-scope human smuggling operation down there, to the tune of making nine figures per week. It's a trafficking machine, so that's where people go, pay up, and get shuttled into America. Canada, by contrast, is a first world nation with a functional governing apparatus. They also have an immigration system that's pretty tough, including requirements that are often rejected by American pro-illegal immigration activists as racist or draconian. Nevertheless, it's an option for entering the United States, where illegal immigrants know they have a strong chance of being able to stay. Many of them are just seeking a better life and new opportunities. It's hard to begrudge them that, because -- despite what so many of our ungrateful domestic critics preach -- this is an amazing place.
But they nevertheless have no right to be here, and enforcing our statutes is about respecting national sovereignty, maintaining law and order, and upholding fairness. All of those things are being actively disrespected now, as a matter of public policy. But as Melugin reminds us, there's also a public safety and national security component to the crisis, as well:
NEW: CBP reports 10 people on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) were arrested by Border Patrol at Southern border in July.
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) August 16, 2022
There have now been 66 TSDB hits so far in FY’22.
That’s more than double the previous 5 years combined.
FY’17-FY’21 TSDB hits: 26@FoxNews
I'll leave you with this, via a new DOJ announcement about the staggering 'spike' in fentanyl interdictions in San Diego alone:
More deadly fentanyl is being seized by border officials in San Diego and Imperial counties than at any of the nation’s 300-plus ports of entry, making this federal district an epicenter for fentanyl trafficking into the United States. In the first nine months of FY 2022 (October through June), U.S. Customs and Border Protection law enforcement agencies in San Diego and Imperial counties (CBP Field Operations and Border Patrol) seized 5,091 pounds of fentanyl – which amounts to about 60 percent of the 8,425 pounds of fentanyl seized around the entire country...Mexican cartels are increasingly manufacturing fentanyl for distribution and sale in the United States Precursors are imported from China and other countries and then pressed into pills, powder or mixed into other drugs at massive, industrial-scale labs...“There is no doubt we are in the middle of a fentanyl crisis at the hands of criminal enterprises, transcending our borders into the communities where we live, where we work, where we go to school,” said Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy of the FBI’s San Diego Field Office.
As is the case with human trafficking, imagine what officials don't catch. The border is not secure:
July 2019: ~104k encounters
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 15, 2022
July 2020: 33k
July 2021: 213k
July 2022: 200k
Figures don’t include monthly known got-aways, averaging ~50k+ since at least spring. Total known got-aways rapidly closing in on 1 million over last 2 years. The border is neither closed nor secure. https://t.co/VETJ7UtPOd