Washington Examiner Biden administration denies there’s a border crisis, but here's the reality

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  • 03-04-2021, 07:48 AM
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sparked a debate this week when he said that the situation on the southern border is not a crisis but a “challenge."
© Provided by Washington Examiner The comment triggered raucous rebuttals from Republicans, and even one Democrat, who said the releases of untested migrants into Texas border communities during a pandemic is reason for major concern.

But what is a border crisis? U.S. law does not define the term.
The 1,000-a-day line
Jeh Johnson, who led DHS during former President Barack Obama’s final term and was Mayorkas’s boss, said in 2019 that if the number of people apprehended at the border ”was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number, and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was gonna be in a bad mood the whole day." The line has become a favorite for Republicans to cite as the reason that the 2,400 people who were encountered at the border each day in January is a crisis.
Nearly 400,000 people are expected to have been encountered at the southern border from October 2020, the start of fiscal year 2021, through February.
BORDER PATROL RELEASED 350 MIGRANTS INTO SMALL ARIZONA CITY OVER PAST TWO WEEKS AS BORDER CRISIS WORSENS
Border officials anticipate 117,000 children will arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or guardian in 2021. The number is higher than the 68,000 taken into custody during the 2014 surge of solo children, which Obama termed an "actual humanitarian crisis." It's greater than the 80,000 who arrived during the 2019 surge, which then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called "a humanitarian and security crisis."
Dr. Victor Manjarrez Jr., a former senior Border Patrol agent who is the associate director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso, said Johnson’s numerical criteria is “meaningless" because it does not get how it affects the agency.
“A crisis occurs when illicit cross-border activity exceeds our capacity to handle the flow,” said John Sandweg, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Obama. “We are nowhere near that point today as our enforcement capacity greatly exceeds current flows. In fact, the Border Patrol is better staffed and equipped than ever before.”
Sandweg said agents were in crisis decades ago, when just 5,000 agents were on the payroll, compared to the 19,000 employed now, but other border officials disagreed.
Who is arriving matters
From the inception of the Border Patrol in the 1920s to the early 2010s, most arrests were of Mexican men, who would be booked into the system then turned over to ICE to await removal proceedings or quickly sent back to Mexico by the Border Patrol.
Agents experienced mass flows of Mexican men attempting to get into the United States during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations. In five years during those three administrations, annual arrests at the southern border topped 1.5 million.
Dr. Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who tracks migration of children at the U.S.-Mexico border, said Mexican adult apprehensions have dropped more than 80% since then as migration trends evolved.
However, over the past decade, more families and children from countries other than Mexico are arriving. That presents new logistical problems that arrivals of Mexican adults did not.
In the early 2010s, cartels began funneling people from extremely poor countries south of Mexico up to the border. For $5,000 to $10,000 per person, they guaranteed admission to the U.S. The 2014 unaccompanied minor surge to the border followed a 2007 anti-trafficking law that mandated children from countries other than Mexico and Canada could not be deported on the basis that they might have been trafficked. The law unintentionally led to most unaccompanied children being released into the U.S. to await immigration hearings years down the road because children could not be held be endlessly detained.
Then, in 2015, an update to the Flores settlement agreement mandated that families not be held more than 20 days. Without intending for it, the agreement meant that families would essentially be set free into the U.S. at that point in time.
When does the immigration system break down?
In 2019, 473,000 family members were encountered. At the height of the crisis in May, agents were taking into custody 4,000 people on some days. ICE, where families are supposed to go after being taken into custody by Border Patrol, lacked the beds at its family residential centers, prompting Border Patrol to open its backdoors and release people. While apprehending 4,000 Mexican adults a day during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s was challenging, Border Patrol at least had adequate rooms for adults.
Now, the Biden administration has announced emergency tent facilities in several spots on the border to hold overflow families and children. Border Patrol is only supposed to hold people three days before they are transferred out, but with transfer agencies inundated and out of beds, Border Patrol is increasingly getting stuck getting people through the system.
“A crisis is looming, if not already here,” said Ron Vitiello, former deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. “In practical terms, when stations and shelters are not adequate for the detained population or the UACs, you’re in crisis. Thousands a night are pouring in.”
Manjarrez said agents caring for families and children means fewer agents will be on patrol in remote areas where others attempt to cross, and they will be able to evade arrest.
Mounting pressure over the past year
Illegal migration at the southern border dropped last spring because the Trump administration said it would not take custody of anyone but immediately push them back to Mexico, an initiative referred to as Title 42. When President Biden took office in January, he discontinued the immediate expulsions for Central American children but did allow Mexican children to continue being removed. In February, 9,000 unaccompanied children were taken into custody.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which takes the children from the Border Patrol, has just 8,000 beds available nationwide, prompting Biden to erect temporary facilities to accommodate thousands of children before they are ultimately released into the U.S.
“We don't have limitless facilities. We don't have a limitless personnel to be able to do this. We don't have unlimited immigration judges,” said Morgan.
Where it goes from here
“As the pandemic recedes and vaccination efforts ramp up, the Biden administration will face pressure to rescind Title 42, which could very well be the switch from a situation of ‘challenges’ to one of ‘crisis’ at the border,” said Dr. Ryan Berg, research fellow in Latin America studies for the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank.
Morgan claimed Biden is clinging to a double standard by ending the Remain in Mexico program that forced asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico but is still forcing all adults to be returned to Mexico under Title 42.
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"If they think Mexico is so horrible — then they should cancel Title 42, but they're not going to cancel it,” said Morgan. “If they cancel Title 42, the next day that 4,000 [border arrests] a day is coming into our facilities, and they're going to have to release them into the United States. The crisis now becomes a catastrophic crisis.”
Tags: News, Border Security, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS, National Security, Law Enforcement, Immigration, Migrants
Original Author: Anna Giaritelli




fiden and teh marxist DPST's are releasing thousands of illegals infected with wuhan virus and other infectious diseases, MS-13 gangs, traffickers in drugs and people to destroy america so they can institue their marxist revolution.
rexdutchman's Avatar
Oh you mean the crisis THEY CAUSED
As of yesterday 6% entering ILLEGALLY have COVID , + 321 unaccompanied minors A DAY
YUP JUST FUCKING BRILLIANCE AT WORK , and some people voted for this guy