Approximately 851,000 illegal border crossers were apprehended and taken into custody by Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2019, which ran from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019.
About 40,000 of these were taken into custody during September, which was less than one-third of the 132,000 arrests made in May at the height of the surge in illegal border crossers.
These figures were shared by U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the Washington Examiner, then picked up by other news outlets.
In addition to the 851,000 illegal border crossers who were apprehended, as of August 31, another 263,000 people were encountered by the Office of Field Operations (OFO), an agency within CBP responsible for managing U.S. customs operations at 20 Field Operations offices, 328 ports of entry, and 16 pre-clearance stations in Canada, Ireland, the UAE, and the Caribbean. Those people encountered by OFO were not arrested but were denied entry.
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The Examiner cited CBP figures indicating that the greatest change in fiscal 2019 compared to the previous 95 years on record was the number of families who arrived. In 2015, fewer than 80,000 people apprehended by the Border Patrol arrived with a family member. In contrast, as of August 31, more than 450,000 of those taken into custody arrived with a family member.
A report posted by the conservative PJ Media website on October 5 observed that the large increase in families crossing the border illegally and then being apprehended created a humanitarian crisis, since the Border Patrol was not prepared to house or provide for the needs of such large numbers of people.
This crisis was exacerbated by the practice of various open border groups encouraging Central American family migrants to come to the United States. PJ Media noted: “While part of the blame for the crisis goes to a lack of foresight by border agencies, it can certainly be said that the crisis was at least partly manufactured by the open borders crowd, done in service to their own agenda.”
During the Obama administration, when large numbers children unaccompanied by parents or relatives illegally crossed our borders, a different sort of crisis resulted. It placed a heavy burden on the American schools that were given the responsibility of educating them.
We noted in an article posted by The New American five years ago that that the Obama administration estimated that 60,000 children unaccompanied by parents or relatives poured into the United States in 2014, up from about 6,000 in 2011.
Official figures released in 2014 by the Department of Health and Human Services indicate that our federal government had released 37,477 children or teenaged illegal aliens into “safe settings with sponsors” as of July 31 that year. Local schools then had to educate these children, at taxpayer expense.
Under the Trump administration, when such unaccompanied minors were detained in facilities close to the border, “progressive” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) toured a border detention facility and accused the Trump administration of running “concentration camps.” Her statement was criticized by Jewish groups who said the comparison diminished the Holocaust.
Photo: Yobro10 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
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Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
