Media outlets are finally admitting the rapidly growing rush of migrants across the Mexico border.
“For the fourth time in five months, the number of migrant families crossing the southwest border has broken records, border enforcement authorities said Tuesday, warning that government facilities are full and agents are overwhelmed,” the New York Times said. It continued:
More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, more than double the levels from the same period last year and approaching the largest numbers seen in any February in the last 12 years.
“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point,” Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters in announcing the new data.
National Public Radio (NPR) admitted the problem with a headline saying, “Migrant Families Arrive In Busloads As Border Crossings Hit 10-Year High,” The story continued:
The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the Southern border in February, the highest total for a single month in almost a decade.
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Between October and last week, Border Patrol agents have picked up more than 260,000 people — a 90 percent jump over the same period a year ago.
The Washington Post reported: “Family migration pushes unauthorized crossings to highest levels in a decade,” adding:
The number of people taken into custody along the Mexico border jumped an additional 31 percent last month as an unprecedented mass migration of families from Central America pushes unauthorized crossings to the highest levels in a decade, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures released Tuesday.
Last month, the shortest of the year, was the busiest February at the border since 2007, officials said, with authorities detaining 76,103 migrants, up from 58,207 in January. The percentage of migrants who arrived as part of a family group also reached a new peak, with 40,325 parents and children taken into custody, a 67 percent leap from the previous month.
The New York Times played up the new offer of medical care for the migrants, spotlighted pleas for aid by pro-migration groups, and only briefly mentioned the incentives being offered to the migrants by Congress and the courts. “‘Crossing with a child is a guarantee of a speedy release and an indefinite release into the United States,’ Mr. McAleenan said.”
The Times also was silent about the harmful economic impact of the migration on Americans and the economic benefits that flow to business groups.
The Post, however, mentioned the ability of migrants to get jobs in the United States, saying:
An attractive job market in the United States is prompting more Central Americans to leave the poverty and insecurity of their home countries and head north, typically in groups of one parent and one child. Such pairings all but ensure the family will be processed quickly and released from U.S. custody in a matter of days.
NPR sympathetically portrayed the migrant aid groups as passive respondents to a humanitarian emergency:
“It takes an immense effort to do this,” said Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, a nonprofit organization in El Paso, Texas, that provides shelter, food and medical care to migrants after they’re released from government custody.
Most migrants spend just a few days in El Paso, Garcia said, before joining friends or relatives elsewhere in the country, where they’ll wait for their day in immigration court.
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Humanitarian groups and immigration authorities are bracing for even more migrants in the months ahead. The number of people crossing the border illegally typically crests in the spring, as temperatures warm.
Read the NPR story here.