Open-borders Democrats want you to believe the only crisis at the border is the one of President Trump’s making, which is true to the degree that his immigration officials are continuing catch and release — the practice of rounding up illegals and then dumping them among unsuspected Americans such as those in Yuma, Arizona.
And border officials say Central Americans know they’ll be released to disappear into the country, particularly if they have children in tow. Thus do they keep coming. More than 100,000 crossed the border in March alone. More than 400,000 have come since October.
Some of the latest reports from Customs and Border Protection, and the news that smugglers are advertising in Central American newspapers for clients to bring north, shows just what border cops are up against: a never-ending flow of people in large groups and drugs worth millions.
Whopping Large Groups
A worsening problem for border agents is the arrival of illegal aliens in large groups, defined as 100 or more.
On Tuesday, they apprehended a large group more than three times that size west of Lukeville, about halfway between Yuma and Tucson.
CBP’s cameramen picked up 360 illegals after a convoy of buses stopped south of the border. “Border Patrol agents watched as the group exited the buses and walked under the vehicle barrier that sits on the international boundary,” CBP reported.
That many illegals required border agents to get help. Because the illegals crossed at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, National Park Service employees assisted them. As well, the agency sent in reinforcements from other areas of the Tucson sector.
On Sunday, CBP apprehended 35 illegals, mostly in families and all Hondurans, near Presidio, Texas.
Busing illegals to the border so they can cross in strength like an army company is a new tactic in the effort to break down American sovereignty that increasingly worries border officials.
CBP chief Kevin McAleenan discussed it at a news conference on March 5 at which he said the influx of illegals is “unsustainable.” He noted that buses enable “much shorter smuggling cycles,” and that one of the large groups at that time was 334 strong.
And again, drug traffickers use those large groups as decoys to smuggle drugs. While border agents are distracted with handling hundreds of migrants who arrive in need of food, water, and medical care, the drug smugglers carry their deadly wares across the border.
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Come On Up!
One reason so many illegals are heading north? Advertising.
Illegals not only hear about lax border policies and catch and release through social media, as a border official said at the news conference on March 5, but also read ads in newspapers.
On Tuesday, The Daily Caller detailed what a “migrant” told a TV reporter in the Rio Grande Valley: Newspaper ads urge migrants to head for the land of milk and honey, where jobs and welfare await.
“The whole world knows, they put it in the news,” a Honduran woman caught at the border told the reporter. “They tell us everywhere if you come to the United States, they’ll help you.”
Said a Guatemalan “pastor,” “Yes, we’ve been told that, we read it on our newspapers. That’s why we’re here.”
Smugglers pay for the ads, which emphasize that families, or illegals carting along a child, get preferential treatment, the “pastor” said. “We’ve been told if you are a father you can bring your child and you will be helped here if you’re in that situation.”
More Than $1.4M In Drugs
But beyond dealing with illegal aliens, border agents are waging a never-ending battle against drug smugglers.
The biggest recent haul was at the bridge that connects Hidalgo and McAllen, Texas, to Reynosa, Mexico.
Agents arrested a Mexican for attempting to cross the border with 51 pounds of methamphetamine worth $1,022,000.
The same day, agents in California collared an American citizen in Temecula, California, who had been “swerving in and out” of traffic on I-15. Agents stopped him when he exited the highway.
CBP’s drug-sniffing dogs alerted agents to a big haul: They confiscated 14 bundles of cocaine that weighed 33 pounds and two bundles of black tar heroin that weighed about 6.4 pounds. The cocaine is worth $334,000; the heroin, $66,700, for a total $400,700.
On April 11 at the Hidalgo bridge crossing, agents nailed a Mexican with more than 21 pounds of cocaine worth $167,000.
Total take? More than $1.4 million.
Photo: AP Images
