As The Daily Wire has consistently reported, the United States is experiencing a hitherto unseen migrant influx at our beleaguered southern border. The situation, as Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, recently told Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz in an interview, is “unprecedented” and makes for “uncharted waters” for our border and homeland security apparatus. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) explained the context of the staggering March border numbers, as part of its press release that accompanied its monthly report:
In Fiscal Year 2019 to date, the U.S. Border Patrol has seen a more than 370% increase in the number of family units apprehended compared to the same time period in FY2018. Today, 60% of apprehensions along the Southwest border are family units and unaccompanied children, made up predominantly of individuals from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Additionally, through the first six months of FY19, CBP has encountered 104 large groups composed of 100 or more individuals totaling 17,242 apprehensions. In comparison, U.S. Border Patrol encountered 13 large groups in FY2018 and two in FY2017.
As The Daily Wire reported yesterday, much of the influx has to do with the systemic encouragement — from our legal, judicial, political, and media classes — of the filing of legally bogus asylum claims:
The root cause of much of the migration…is the systemic loosening of our statutory asylum law to cover many economically motivated migrants — which is in direct conflict with the legal requirement, under 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i), that asylum is only properly considered for migrants who have been persecuted in their native countries for “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” But, under the erroneous prevailing status quo wherein a mention of “credible fear of persecution” to a U.S. border agent amounts to something closely akin to magical words granting automatic entry (and often a subsequent quick release, pending a follow-up adjudication hearing for which an alien may or may not show up), asylum claims have skyrocketed. As Rachel Bovard noted at American Greatness in October, “asylum cases more than octupled from 5,523 in 2009 to 81,864 in 2016” — and the trend has only metastasized under President Trump.
Indeed, as The Daily Wire reported on Monday, in quoting an alien from an underlying article, “[t]he whole world know, it’s all over the news, everyone knows that if we come to the United States they’ll help us.”
Suffice it to say that this is not the best way for a nation to go about protecting and securing its sovereignty. And now, the border town of Yuma, Arizona is taking purely symbolic action to do something about it. The city of Yuma has declared its own state of emergency due to the migrant influx overwhelming city resources.
CNN reports:
The mayor of Yuma, Arizona, has declared a state of emergency, saying his city doesn’t have the resources to respond as the Border Patrol releases a growing number of migrants from custody.
“There’s an imminent threat of having too many migrant releases into our community, and it’s above our capacity as a community to sustain,” Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls said as he announced the measure Tuesday.
Nicholls told reporters he’s looking for a “FEMA-type response” to help his city deal with the influx.
“FEMA shows up at disasters all the time. This isn’t a natural disaster, but it is a disaster either way,” he said. “Their resources could come in and take care of the situation and would effectively handle that.”
It is, at best, unclear whether federal lawmakers will begin to help solve the border crisis. And sorry to disappoint the Yuma mayor, but FEMA will probably not be arriving anytime soon. But as a modicum of proffered hope, at least some federal lawmakers appear to have their eyes on the problem.