DHS: Border Crossings Reach 4,100 Migrants in One Day

The number of migrants daily crossing the U.S. border hit a decade-long record of 4,100 on Tuesday, says border commissioner Kevin McAleenan.

According to the Washington Post:

McAleenan said the agency detained more than 4,100 migrants Tuesday, the highest one-day total at the border in more than a decade, and agency projections have border apprehensions on pace to exceed 100,000 this month — an increase of more than 30 percent. By comparison, at the height of the last border crisis, in May 2014, agents apprehended more than 68,800 migrants that month.

The inflow includes a record number of youths and children who are being delivered to the border by coyotes, often under a contract with the foreign parents who are already living and working illegally in the underground economy.  The Post reported:

[Customs and Border Protection] officials say they are particularly alarmed by the soaring number of unaccompanied juveniles in crowded detention cells because Health and Human Services can’t place them in shelters fast enough. CBP officials said they have 1,350 underage migrants in holding cells without a parent — and 20 percent are 12 years old or younger.

But the inflow of foreign children and youths into Americans’ blue-collar schools and jobs is aided by statements from McAleenan and other agency officials who say the young migrants cannot be repatriated until Congress changes a 2008 law. But that law targeted “severe trafficking,” such as the involuntary movement of prostitutes under the control of international criminal gangs.

The cross-border flow of children and youths — dubbed “UACs” — is also being protected by a clause in the 2019 budget which makes it difficult for enforcement officials to detect and deport the foreign parents who pay coyotes to deliver their children to the U.S. border agents who then relay the young migrants to temporary shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services. The parents then pick up their children at the shelters by offering to “sponsor” them until a later court hearing. The UAC-smuggling clause was demanded by Democratic negotiators and approved in February by the GOP negotiators, who had earlier agreed to exclude DHS experts from the closed-door talks.

In a Wednesday speech at the border, McAleenan declared:

Two weeks ago, I briefed the media and testified in Congress that our immigration system was at the breaking point. That breaking point has arrived this week at our border … We are on pace for over 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants in March, with 90 percent of those — 90,000 people — [being unable] to be repatriated expeditiously and instead are almost guaranteed to be released and to remain in the U.S. indefinitely, regardless of the merits of their immigration or asylum claim.

The March inflow will include roughly 15,000 parents and 40,000 children in “family units” who will ask for asylum — and then will be released — plus roughly 35,000 single adults who will try to evade border officers, he said.

McAleenan pinned the blame on Congress and the judges who have jointly cut legal holes in the border fences by allowing migrants to stream into U.S. cities, jobs, and schools if they merely ask for asylum:

The increase in family units is a direct response to the vulnerabilities in our legal frameworks where migrants and smugglers know that they will be released and be allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely pending immigration proceedings that could be many years out. This is due to court orders that undermine the integrity of our immigration system. There is no questioning [about] why this is happening.

“This economic migration … is overwhelming [the smaller] legitimate asylum population,” that is likely to win court cases for asylum, he said.

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after high school or university. The federal government then imports roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants, refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar guest workers and roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers, and it also tolerates about eight million illegal workers.

In 2019, because of catch-and-release rules mandated by Congress and the courts, the federal government also will likely release at least 350,000 Central American laborers into the U.S. job market, even as at least 500,000 more migrants sneak past U.S. border defenses or overstay their visas.

Overall, in 2019, the U.S. government will allow at least two million new foreign workers into the United States to compete for the starter jobs sought by the latest wave of four million U.S. graduates. The new migrants also undermine the 24 million other Americans and the roughly three million legal immigrants who have joined the workforce since 2014.

This federal policy of using legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth for investors shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar graduates and blue-collar foreign labor.

This cheap labor economic policy forces Americans to compete even for low wage jobs, it widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.