A U.S. Border Patrol official said that illegal immigration is on track this financial year to top the past three years combined.
John Modlin, the interim chief in charge of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, revealed how large the ongoing flood of illegal immigration has grown over the past several months. Modlin said that if the current pace continues unabated, illegal immigration will top all of 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined.
“So right now we’re about a hundred percent over where we were this time, this last fiscal year. We’ve already surpassed in the first four months of this fiscal year. We’ve already surpassed all of 2018. If the flow continues at the rate it is here, by the end of this fiscal year, we will have surpassed ‘18, ‘19 and ‘20, all combined,” Modlin told Sharyl Attkinson, host of “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkinson.”
Border agents have arrested nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States over the past four months alone. Modlin overseas border security over 262 miles of the U.S. southern border. He said the illegal immigrants agents catch in his sector are overwhelmingly single adults.
“Almost 90% of the people that are apprehended in this sector, are single adults that try to avoid apprehensions,” Modlin said.
The growing crisis at the border has almost entirely been driven by President Joe Biden’s border policy, which reflects a drastic shift from the policies of former President Donald Trump, and even of former President Barack Obama. Biden has prioritized processing illegal immigrants and fast-tracking their release into the interior of the United States, whereas Trump aimed to deter illegal immigration through strict border policy and deportations. As Attkinson reported:
All concerned blame the uptick on an expected reversal of get-tough policies put in place under President Trump. At the end of 2018, 2,000 immigrants a day were being intercepted at the Southern border prompting security concerns and a humanitarian crisis. In early 2019, the Trump administration invoked “Migrant Protection Protocols” forcing those seeking asylum to wait in Mexico. Then in 2020, “Title 42”— an emergency health order — let border officials immediately turn back illegal immigrants because of Covid-19.
The moves had a dramatic impact. By May of 2020, 90% of illegal immigrants caught at the Southwest border were being expelled. And the number intercepted dropped from about a million in 2019, to roughly half that in 2020.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has struggled to address the growing border crisis. The president has reportedly moved to open child detention centers at full capacity to handle the increasing flow of minors coming into the United States with families and unaccompanied. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) approved the move and scrapped past guidance that said such facilities could only be open at half capacity because of COVID-19.
Biden’s fellow Democratic politicians have begun warning the president that the situation on the U.S. southern border is untenable and could have severe repercussions for the Democratic Party and the country.
“Well, my concern at this in the recent weeks in my district, migrants who made it across the border, who even pass the line of MPPs [Migrant Protection Protocols], who were 5,000 folks that have been waiting for two years across the border, made it across the Rio Grande Valley were processed and released,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) said last week. “If that is the message that we send to Central America and around the world, I can assure you, it won’t be long before we have tens of thousands of people showing up to our border.”
“And it’ll be catastrophic for our party, for our country, for my region, for my district, in the middle of a pandemic, in an area where we’ve lost over 3,000 people in my small congressional district,” he continued. “So, I think we need to have a better plan in place. I think asylum seekers should be able to ask for asylum and be processed in their home country or a neighboring country. And we shouldn’t have a policy in place that impulses people to make this 2,000-mile trek where cartels and human traffickers are enriching themselves.”