What Is Wrong with Martha’s Vineyard?

            Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Texas Governor Greg Abbott tried to get the attention of President Joe Biden and his administration with words and pictures. When Biden continued to ignore them, they began busing illegal immigrants to New York City and Washington, D.C. The Democrat mayors of the two cities howled in protest and begged for help from the federal government.

Yet, many Americans did not hear about the crisis at the southern border until Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew roughly 50 asylum-seeking immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard last month. The media compared flying the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard to the killing of six thousand Jews in World War II. The rich people in Martha Vineyard – a small, liberal island off the coast of Massachusetts – could not manage having the migrants on their island and arranged to bus them to a military base in Cape Cod the day after their arrival.

Jarrett Stepman compared the plight of the 15,000 residents of Martha’s Vineyard dealing with about 50 illegal immigrants to the numbers of migrants crossing into the border towns. Martha’s Vineyard had just as many or more facilities to care for fifty migrants as the border towns have to deal with the hundreds or thousands of illegal immigrants that come to their towns every single day. Here is Stepman’s “profile of the crisis of illegal immigration for six cities in Texas and Arizona – mostly as small or even smaller than Martha’s Vineyard.” 

Uvalde, Texas

The horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, exposed some of the indirect effects of President Joe Biden’s border crisis. The city of just over 15,000 has been inundated with illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers since that crisis exploded.

The Center Square reported on the surge in April:

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] agents told him to expect up to 150 people to be released daily into his community, Fox 29 News reported. A minimum of 150 people released a day, 365 days a year, translates to 54,750 people being released into a town with a population of roughly 17,000….

Del Rio, Texas

It was in Del Rio that photos of Border Patrol agents attempting to stop incoming Haitian migrants went viral. Even though they were doing their job and were cleared of the charge of “whipping” the illegal aliens, the Biden administration still threw the agents under the bus.

Del Rio has dealt with the enormous challenge not only of a general increase in illegal immigration, but, in 2021, tens of thousands of Haitian migrants showing up all at once. Many of these asylum-seekers eventually were expelled from the country, but the flood of illegal immigration remained a huge problem for the local community.

Del Rio has a population of 34,673. In January, nearly that many illegal immigrants crossed into the Del Rio sector along the border. This from a February report by the Washington Examiner:

Last month, 30,773 people were encountered illegally crossing the border in Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which spans 240 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary. For each of the tow of Del Rio’s 34,673 residents, one noncitizen was taken into custody….

El Paso, Texas

The West Texas city of El Paso, also located on the southwest border, has been inundated with illegal immigrants. This past year, the problem became extreme.

“Unauthorized border crossings climbed 71% in Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, compared to the same three-month period a year ago,” the El Paso Times reported in January. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 49,012 encounters [in] October through December in the sector that includes West Texas and New Mexico, up from 28,553 in the first quarter of fiscal 2021.”

It’s now even worse.

Since the beginning of September, over 1,000 migrants arrive every day in the city of just under 700,000.

El Paso may be larger than other border towns, but that doesn’t mean it’s able to handle the sheer quantity of people it’s been expected to process….

Eagle Pass, Texas

The 50 asylum-seekers flown to Martha’s Vineyard by DeSantis started their journey in Eagle Pass, Texas.

While Martha’s Vineyard struggled to deal with 50 migrants, Eagle’s Pass concurrently was hit with 500 illegal immigrants crossing the border in a two-hour period, according to Fox News. 

It’s an increasingly common occurrence in the besieged border town of 28,000, which is almost entirely Hispanic and where per capita income is $18,832 a year.

Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin reported that more than 450,000 illegal crossings occurred this year in the Eagle Pass sector….

Yuma, Arizona

Texas isn’t the only state with besieged border towns. Yuma, Arizona – a city of 97,000 – has been swamped with illegal immigrants.

“You have mayors from Washington, D.C. and New York City that are complaining about a couple of thousand people over three or four months – we’re seeing those numbers monthly or even weekly,” Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls, a Republican, told reporters, according to Conn Carroll at the Washington Examiner. “If those few thousand people are having an impact, imagine the impact of over 200,000 people.”

In December, Nicholls declared a state of emergency after 6,000 people were encountered coming across the border in just four days. The Border Patrol was unable to respond to the number of people crossing, prompting migrants to walk into town looking for help, Nicholls said. He left the state of emergency in place for the past five months because he has ‘not seen anything from the administration or the [homeland security] secretary that looks like it’s going to change this flow.’ …

Gila Bend, Arizona

An even more extreme example of an even smaller Arizona town dealing with a gargantuan illegal immigration mess is Gila Bend.

Gila Bend has just 1,900 residents but has been a dumping ground for illegal immigrants picked up elsewhere by the Border Patrol. The rural community is about 80 miles north of the border and essentially has no infrastructure to accommodate the waves of migrants dropped off there.

It’s hardly the kind of place that is equipped to handle more than a handful of arrivals….

            Martha’s Vineyard should be ashamed of itself. Its liberal friends leave the border open and allow five million migrants to cross into the United States illegally. The rich enclave should do its share in caring for their invited guests!