Border Reality: A Caravan Crosses Every Day

A caravan a day makes our sovereignty go away.

If you want to see what a real government shutdown looks like, look at what is going on at our border. And it’s a much bigger problem than the news-covered caravan parked south of San Diego. It’s the equivalent of a caravan quietly crossing our border every day. Because Pelosi and Schumer refuse to end catch-and-release policies, the drug cartels are using our border agents to complete the criminal conspiracy killing our citizens.

On Tuesday, Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, testified before the Senate that 3,029 illegals were apprehended at the border on December 3, the biggest single-day number in years. That would be a pace of over 1.1 million a year. The Arizona Republic is reporting that record numbers of Guatemalan families are crossing in the Yuma sector just west of San Luis where the Colorado River has dried up. There are no pedestrian fences in that part of the Yuma sector, and they are coming right over the dried-up river to surrender themselves to agents.

“We are seeing an increase in these large groups that are coming in a larger frequency,” Yuma Sector spokesman Jose Garibay told the Arizona paper. Even in areas with fencing, some of them are coming over to surrender themselves, increasingly in large numbers. “Groups sometimes numbering more than 80 migrants continue scaling the 18-foot-tall fence to enter the country illegally. They even risk serious injuries, avoiding repeated calls from U.S. border officials to cross or present their claims legally at ports of entry,” the Republic reports.

But as I’ve mentioned before, even more disturbing than who we catch is who we don’t catch. The broken asylum policies driven by the courts and supported by the Left are creating an entire economy for the drug cartels.

Why illegals are coming in urban sectors and what that means

In order to understand the latest trends at the border, we need to remember that all border migration is controlled by the cartels that have dominion over their given region. They take across people who want to come here illegally for jobs or family reunification and use them to smuggle in their drugs or criminals. Given that our insane asylum policies allow economic migrants to come and surrender themselves to agents, it is easier for them and for the cartels if they just cross out in the open, which allows the cartels to use the diversion to bring in their drugs undetected.

In a freewheeling interview with CR, Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Council, explained the latest trend at the border that is exasperating his colleagues as a result of congressional inaction. “Unlike previous years, what we’re seeing now is that a large number of illegal aliens aren’t even trying to get away from us,” said the veteran border agent. “Instead, they’re running straight to us. Due to the asylum loopholes, they understand that apprehension is as good as, if not better, than getting away. This is why they’re once again crossing in metropolitan areas like El Paso and San Diego, areas that haven’t been very busy since the late 1990s. There is no need to cross through harsh rural terrain and risk dehydration and other dangers when you can illegally cross the border in major metropolitan areas, give yourself up, claim asylum, and get released just to disappear into the ‘shadows’ of society. Cartels coach illegal border crossers on exactly what they need to say when they claim asylum, allowing them to game the system.”

This trend is reflected in the latest border numbers. El Paso, which was dormant for many years, is now the second biggest trafficking area of the nine border sectors. Whereas total border apprehensions of family units are up 303 percent this fiscal year relative to the first two months of FY 2018, those numbers are up in San Diego and El Paso by 601 percent and 1866 percent respectively.

Then what happens in the rural areas out of sight of the agents? Judd continued:

“To be clear, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t criminals and drug runners coming in through the rural areas – there are, but given that the entire of flow of aliens is orchestrated by the cartels, they’re using ‘asylum seekers’ as pawns to create gaps in the border by tying up Border Patrol resources. The cartels flood the metropolitan areas with more family units than we have resources to deal with, causing us to move resources from rural areas, thereby creating the gaps that allow them to move more valuable products like illicit narcotics and criminal aliens. It’s sort of like a game of football. Offenses will use misdirection in hopes the defense will bite. When the defense bites, the good offenses exploit the weaknesses or gaps for large gains.”

Judd made it clear that President Trump, by pushing for a wall and an end to the asylum loophole, “is one of the very few people trying to stop this trend and provide lasting border security for the American public.”

However, until Congress acts to stop the court-driven policies, these politicians are quite literally complicit in an evil conspiracy to smuggle drugs and humans. “The American public needs to understand that it is Pelosi and Schumer policies that are allowing the cartels to exploit our vulnerabilities and cross deadly drugs into the country that are killing thousands of our citizens.”

What the current border trend tells us about policy solutions

Consistently, I’ve heard three major themes about the state of play at the border from federal law enforcement and local sheriffs:

1) Migrants are now coming in large numbers, as groups of 100 or more, in addition to single individuals.

2) Migrants are coming out in the open in urban areas where they are more likely to be caught, opposite to trends of previous decades. They are even willing to climb the existing fences in the urban areas, many of which are insufficient, to get over.

3) There is a record flow of drugs, both opioids and non-opioids, pouring over the border facilitated by this flow, but Border Patrol is powerless to stop it because resources are stretched thin and our federal policies play into the scheme of the cartels.

In other words, our national sovereignty and security are shut down because of policies supported by Schumer and Pelosi and their allies in the courts. This is why, according to DEA, the size of the Mexican poppy fields more than tripled in 2013-2016, right around the time the Central American migration surged, driven by asylum, DACA, and catch-and-release. Over the same time, deaths from heroin and meth tripled, and fatalities from fentanyl skyrocketed ninefold. If Schumer and Pelosi have their way, we will likely find out in the coming years how the 2018 border surge led to an even worse drug epidemic. If Pelosi thinks it’s “immoral” to build the border wall, she might want to check her sense of morality at the door.

Why we need both a fixed border wall and the elimination of magnets

This is important to understanding why we need both the border wall and a fix to all the magnets, such as bogus asylum. The wall is clearly effective in serving as a force multiplier for blocking those who want to avoid detection. It can keep out criminals and drugs. Just ask Israel.

On the other hand, those seeking entry into this country for economic reasons but exploiting asylum will continue to come over the fence deliberately seeking detection, which is why we must get rid of the magnets and end phony asylum. Once we begin prosecuting phony asylum-seekers again rather than releasing them, they will no longer want to be detected by border agents and will be deterred by an effective wall. The proposed wall is much harder to climb than existing fencing, and it would take migrants too long to get over before risk of detection. By that time, they would be scared of getting caught.

Moreover, while the wall will help between the points of entry, migrants are increasingly coming to the points of entry themselves, and all of them would do the same if we had an impenetrable wall between the points of entry. Many more are coming to the northern border. While channeling the flow to the points of entry with the wall is certainly better than empowering the drug cartels between the points of entry, it still drains our culture and economy to invite potentially millions of people to come based on bogus asylum claims.

This is why the president and the Freedom Caucus are right to make the budget fight about both the wall and the asylum loophole.

This is also why the president is right to dismiss the concern of a government slowdown. Let’s not forget that the military, Social Security, and health care programs are already funded for the remainder of the fiscal year. The only major security-related department not funded is DHS. But it’s circular logic for Democrats to complain about a shutdown, since DHS is not stopping the flood of illegal immigrants every day. What’s the point in funding DHS without fixing this problem if our agents will just be used to facilitate the most evil human and drug smuggling?

Madison explained the arrangement of federalism best in Federalist #45 as keeping the powers of the federal government “few and defined,” applied “principally on external objects.” Most other functions of life and economy are supposed to be handled by state governments. There is no greater purpose to the federal government than protecting us from the ultimate external threat of migration, drugs, gangs, and terrorists at the border. As Iranian president Hassan Rouhani warned a few days ago, Iran will flood the West with “a deluge of drugs, asylum seekers, bombs and terrorism.”

Now is the most critical time for Trump to stand his ground, finally reopen our government, and unshackle our border agents so we can close our border. (For more from the author of “Border Reality: A Caravan Crosses Every Day” please click HERE)

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