What Should Be Done about the Crisis at the Border?

President Joe Biden finally went to the southern border two full years after entering the White House. He did not hesitate to create chaos at the border, but he refused to go to the border to see the chaos there. However, he finally made the trip – yet he did not see the chaos as reported by the New York Post. 

Authorities in El Paso have been tearing down migrant encampments under cover of darkness and dispatching hundreds of migrants across the border to Mexico ahead of President Biden’s scheduled Sunday visit to the overwhelmed border town.

Encampments near the downtown bus station and the Sacred Heart Church, which operates a shelter, have been dismantled by local authorities over the last two nights as the city prepares to host President Biden’s first visit to the southern border, according to a photographer for The Post who witnessed it.

Six buses loaded with mostly Venezuelan migrants were spotted crossing a downtown bridge to Ciudad Juarez, the frontier city in Mexico, Saturday, as police escorted dozens more to a pedestrian crossing.

A Border Patrol agent who did not want to be identified told The Post that 200 people were sent back to Mexico Saturday.

Because the Biden administration refused to enforce federal immigration laws, the local communities along the border and across the country are bearing huge costs. Hans von Spakovsky wrote that the states along the border are “groaning under the enormous cost of sheltering, feeding, educating, policing, and providing medical care for tens of thousands of illegal aliens.”

Von Spakovsky indicated that the costs are more than just monetary. “There are humanitarian costs, as well, paid by those who are assaulted and killed by the human traffickers, those who die from the fentanyl flooding across the border, and those victimized by vicious criminals who have entered illegally.” He called the crisis “unprecedented” and “man-made” by Biden. He then reported numbers because numbers are numbers and do not lie.

The numbers don’t lie. In fiscal year 2022, ending Sept. 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.76 million alien “encounters” at our border. CBP reported another 278,102 in October and an even-more-staggering 283,189 in November. More than 3 million illegal aliens will have crossed our border illegally in the past 15 months – all because of the administration’s irresponsible stewardship of the Department of Homeland Security.

And that number is conservative. It doesn’t include the “gotaways” – those who made it across the border illegally, without getting caught. Border officials estimate there were at least 600,000 “gotaways” in fiscal year 2022, compared to only 60,000 in fiscal year 2020. Supporters of open-border policies argue that this flood of illegal aliens is beneficial. Try telling that to the victims of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens who should never have been allowed to enter the United States.

Texas is one of the few states that provides reports on crimes committed by aliens, and the numbers are appalling. The latest report from the Texas Department of Public Safety notes that, from June 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2022, more than 389,000 criminal aliens were booked into local Texas jails. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that 70% of those arrested were here illegally.

Von Spakovsky emphasized that DHS can confirm the illegal status of only those aliens for whom they have fingerprints in their database. Since there are huge numbers of “gotaways,” it is likely that most of them are here illegally.

But just those 269,000 arrested aliens confirmed to be here illegally were charged with more than 454,000 criminal offenses. That included 847 homicides, 55,509 assaults, 901 kidnappings, 22,139 thefts, 2,551 robberies, 5,579 sexual assaults, 6,729 sexual offenses, 54,885 drug charges, 35,538 obstructing police charges, and 5,315 weapons charges. And this is only in Texas.

According to Von Spakovsky, there are other states, such as California and New York, that will not “collect or report is data.” However, there are Americans who “are being killed and victimized all over the country.” Hence, the “violence, bloodshed, and mayhem caused by these criminals should shock the conscience of every government official.”

The biggest problem is that Biden’s “proposal for mass amnesty and mass parole” promises to “make the problem worse.” Von Spakovsky gave a great suggestion: “It’s time to end the chaos, enforce the law, and hold Biden and all federal and state executive branch officials accountable for failing to do their jobs.”