Issues & Insights
U.S. Navy photo by Steelworker 1st Class Matthew Tyson

Biden’s Border Crisis Is Much Worse Than You Think

In a clumsy effort to hide the latest and altogether shocking data on illegal border crossings, the Department of Homeland Security released its latest report in the dead of night last Friday. Not that it mattered, since the mainstream press wouldn’t have covered it no matter what. But in this case, the numbers are shocking. The reality is even more shocking.

DHS’s Customs and Border Protection agency finally, after basically being forced into it, reported that it had “encountered” almost 2.8 million illegal border crossers in the past fiscal year (which ended Sept. 30). That’s up from 1.9 million last fiscal year And it’s more than four times the number in President Trump’s last year in office.

The CPB also reports capturing 98 people on terrorist watch lists at the border this year (up from 3 in Trump’s last year) and nearly 30,000 with criminal records. Border Patrol agents also had to go on more than 22,000 search and rescue efforts, up from 6,000 in 2020.

Notice a trend here?

Many, if not most of those “encountered” will end up safely in the U.S. after the CBP releases them.

A Daily Signal reporter spent three days at the border recently, and came away “surprised by how much of a well-oiled machine illegal immigration has become.”

She reports that migrants cross the border and wait patiently for Border Patrol agents to pick them up. “Agents take the migrants to a processing center where some basic information is taken down. Then they are put on a bus or an airplane to a city somewhere else in America.” One pair of illegals she said they hoped to go to Chicago while waiting for the CPB van to pick them up.

This is all bad.

But the number that you never hear about is the one that should scare you the most. That’s the number of “got aways.” These are the illegals who purposely evade border patrol agents, most likely because they know that, if they were caught, they’re criminals, gang members, or would-be terrorists who know they won’t get released in the wild.

How many got-aways are there? The CBP can only estimate, but they say that they are aware of more than 600,000 over the last fiscal year, and figure the number tops 1 million since Joe Biden took office.

And with the CPB constantly overwhelmed by the number of people walking across Biden’s open southern border, the number who evade capture is likely far higher than the CBP’s estimate.

Put the two numbers together, and the total number of illegals who have bypassed U.S. immigration, avoided the hassle of applying and getting a visa, slipped past any investigation into their past or why they want entrance, and are now safely ensconced in the U.S., is twice the size of most mid-sized cities in the U.S.   

Who will pay for this flagrant dereliction of duty? You will. In taxes to provide government benefits to this massive influx of people here illegally. In crime rates as gang members and criminals flood the nation. In premature deaths as cartels take advantage of the chaos to ship drugs across the border. And, more likely than not, in a future terrorist attack thanks to the ease with which they can now slip into the U.S.

Protecting the nation from foreign threats and guarding its borders is one of the few jobs the federal government is constitutionally obligated to perform.

The fact that Biden is either too inept, too mentally incapacitated, or too ideologically driven to care should be reason enough to have him and his top lieutenants removed from office.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

1 comment

  • Bill Melugin should get a Pulitzer (or an emmy, whatever they give to tv reporters) for his reporting, but he won’t because he is on the wrong side.

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