OPINION:
With more than 6,500 illegal crossings daily, President Biden’s border crisis is overwhelming the system. New data shows 204,561 immigrants were apprehended attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in May, directly contradicting the White House’s claim that “unlawful border crossings have plummeted.”
May’s crossings make the second-highest total for that month in 22 years. Democrats can no longer live in denial.
The facts show the border crisis is leaving us wide open to terror suspects crossing our southern border at an alarming rate. So far this year, 125 have crossed into our country, compared with 14 through former President Donald Trump’s entire administration.
And 98 crossed last year, a previous record high, up from 16 in 2021.
This past week, it was revealed that border agents made “multiple mistakes” that led a Colombian terrorist on the FBI’s watchlist to be released into the U.S., according to an inspector general report. The migrant, whose name was on the terror watchlist, spent weeks in the U.S.
The case involved the apprehension of an illegal immigrant on April 17, 2022, who was released two days after Border Patrol found he was an “inconclusive match” on the terror watchlist.
Two days later, the FBI obtained further information from the Transportation Security Administration that he was a positive on the watchlist (after the illegal immigrant booked a flight to Tampa, Florida, from Palm Springs, California), and informed Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE later detained him.
“This occurred because CBP’s [Customs and Border Protection] ineffective practices and processes for resolving inconclusive matches with the Terrorist Watchlist led to multiple mistakes,” the report said.
The release of the man came in a busy month, where there were more than 235,000 migrant encounters in Yuma, Arizona, where the man was first flagged, in April 2022 alone.
The IG report included testimony from a Border Patrol agent at the processing center in Yuma, who said he and his co-workers were trying to respond to emails from CBP’s National Targeting Center but were overwhelmed with the surge of illegal crossings, putting the center over capacity.
“Meanwhile, ICE officials explained that while the agency prioritized the arrest, its Fugitive Operations did not receive the migrant’s file until 8 days after requesting it,” Fox News reported.
“Officials said that the delay may have been because the agency’s Yuma office receives about 1,000 alien files once or twice a week that it must sort, box and ship to Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) offices across the country. It is currently piloting using electronic A-files, but that pilot has not yet been expanded.”
In May, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas investigating how the department is handling the national security risk presented by an increased number of known or suspected terrorists illegally crossing the southwestern border.
The letter focused not only on those apprehended at the border but also the 1.5 million illegal “gotaways” who crossed undetected during the Biden administration.
“These ‘known gotaways’ do not provide biometric or biographic information to USBP agents and continue their journey into the interior of the country without background checks against law enforcement databases,” the letter stated. “Terrorists and other bad actors will attempt to exploit weaknesses in border security and vetting procedures to infiltrate the United States. We fear these known gotaways could also include illegal aliens with terrorist ties.”
The letter questioned the extent to which the legal impediments exist to “prevent detention and removal of aliens with terrorist ties, as opposed to impediments imposed by the Biden administration’s misguided policies.”
In 2019, former President Barack Obama’s former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that more than 1,000 apprehensions a day overwhelms the system. May’s 200,000-plus encounters is a 337% increase from the average number of May apprehensions from 2017 through 2020.
Since Mr. Biden took office, 6.9 million immigrants have crossed the border illegally. Homeland Security Investigations estimates that Mexican cartels are making $13 billion a year smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S., 26 times what they made in 2018.
Since Mr. Biden took office, more than 20 tons of fentanyl have crossed the southern border, enough to kill 9.1 billion people.
Despite Mr. Biden’s promise of a fair and humane immigration system, his open border policies aren’t compassionate; they are deadly. Mr. Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services lost track of 85,000 children after responding to Mr. Biden’s demands to “move the children quickly out of shelters” by rolling back important vetting and safeguarding procedures.
Not only are lives lost in the smuggling, but more could be jeopardized with known terrorists flagrantly flouting the law amid Mr. Biden’s lack of enforcement.
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