The border crisis is getting worse, even amid the deadly summer heat, and might turn out to be historic.
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced there were more than 188,000 arrests in June, a 21-year high, and more than 1.1 million so far this fiscal year.
If the trend continues, the decades-old record for southwest border apprehensions of more than 1.6 million in 2000 will be broken, John Daniel Davidson pointed out in a column for The Federalist.
He noted that illegal immigration typically spikes in the spring and then recedes during the hotter summer months. But the number of people crossing the border illegally has increased every month since April.
Another big change in illegal immigration is the demographics, with a growing share now coming from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
In February, 11,909 people were arrested from other countries, rising to 47,000 in June.
The number of migrants from Nicaragua and other Central American countries encountered by Border Patrol has increased three-fold since the beginning of the year. And the number of Haitians and Cubans is 2.5 times higher than it was in January.
Meanwhile, more unaccompanied children have been taken into federal custody so far this year than in all of 2019.
Davidson noted the crisis is unfolding with almost no coverage from the corporate media establishment.
Nevertheless, Americans know what is happening, he said, citing a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that shows a majority disapprove of Biden’s handling of the border.
In the border state of Texas, a recent poll found that immigration and border security are the top concern of voters.
An analysis of the border crisis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, projects the nation’s illegal alien population will increase dramatically as a result of Biden’s “promises of amnesty,” gutting of interior immigration enforcement and ending of most Trump-era border controls, Breitbart News reported.
The illegal alien population “could exceed 20 million” if Biden “implements all of his preferred policies” by the end of 2024, the FAIR analysis estimates.
The analysis by Steven Kopits of Princeton Policy Advisors estimates nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens will arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2021, making it the worst year for illegal immigration in American history.
That amounts to a foreign population three times the population of Wyoming.
Fox News took a snapshot of just one community affected by the surge,
Hudspeth County, which is just miles from El Paso, Texas. Residents have suffered an influx of crime and death amid the unprecedented flood of migrants.
Arvin West, who has served as the county’s sheriff since 2001, told Fox News the formula for fixing the surge is simple.
“Let’s secure the damn border,” he said. “Put border patrol back on the border, let border patrol do their jobs, let ICE do their jobs, and make the damn U.S. attorney do their job.”
