A surge of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border that could reach up to one million border-crossings is “guaranteed” following a possible amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens, says Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach.
In an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday, hosted by Breitbart News Political Editor Matt Boyle and Deputy Political Editor Amanda House, Kobach warned President Trump against negotiating a deal wherein illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are given amnesty, saying such a plan would trigger a massive border surge.
KOBACH: And there will be a surge, it is guarenteed. If there is a DACA amnesty, there will be a massive surge of hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million, new illegal aliens.
HOUSE: Right, we saw that in the ’80’s and the ’90’s, as well, following the 1986 amnesty.
KOBACH: That’s exactly right. And as some Breitbart readers may know, if they’ve seen my piece this week, I put some statistics in there. Yeah, that ’86 amnesty, it ended up being for 2.7 million people which was a larger number than was expected by Congress and by President Reagan’s administration when it happened. And the reason its a larger number is its estimated that about 700,000 people came in or applied for the amnesty who were not eligible for it. And so… what happens when you grant amnesty is immediately people flood across the border because they want to falsely claim that they were already here and get the new amnesty or they want to at least get here and wait for the next amnesty.
An amnesty for DACA illegal aliens has the potential to trigger a border surge that could triple the current level of border-crossings, which under President Trump, have ticked back up to Obama-era levels due to border wall construction being stalled in the prototype stage for months.
As the Migration Policy Institute has chronicled, previous border surges from amnesty programs have brought hundreds of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border:
While the flow of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) has been climbing steadily since 2012, a dramatic surge has taken place in the last six months, with the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas as the principal place of entry. The Border Patrol there has converted entire stations to house unaccompanied minors and families.
According to the Border Patrol, apprehensions of unaccompanied children increased from 16,067 in fiscal year (FY) 2011 to 24,481 in FY 2012 and 38,833 in FY 2013. During the first eight months of FY 2014, 47,017 such children were apprehended by the Border Patrol. If the influx continues apace—and it shows no signs of slowing—the administration predicts that by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, totals could reach 90,000.
Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors currently arriving at the border are from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). This breakdown represents a significant shift: prior to 2012, more than 75 percent of UACs were from Mexico.
In recent days, Trump has said that negotiations for a DACA amnesty — that would include cutting legal immigration levels to benefit America’s workers and immediately constructing the border wall — are “probably dead” due to Democrats’ unwillingness to cut legal immigration and bar employers from hiring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens.
Listen to the full Breitbart News Sunday interview here:
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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