A Border Patrol official estimated that more than 1 million illegal immigrants are expected to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021 as the White House grapples with how to find facilities and process them.
“We’re already starting to see some higher days of 6,000-plus apprehensions,” Raul Ortiz, deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, told reporters. “So I fully expect our border patrol agents to encounter over a million people this year.”
Border Patrol apprehended approximately 100,000 illegal immigrants in February, which is the highest number since February 2019, Ortiz said. He noted that people try to illegally cross into the U.S. between April and June.
A facility in Donna, Texas, holds about 4,100 people, with many of them being unaccompanied children, Reuters reported. Border Patrol official Oscar Escamilla told Reuters that some 2,000 unaccompanied children have been held there for more than 72 hours, which is the legal limit.
“It’s out of my hands,” he said. “For whatever reason, they have fallen through the system or through the cracks.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday issued a statement criticizing human smuggling attempts into the United States.
“The inhumane way smugglers abuse children while profiting off parents’ desperation is criminal and morally reprehensible,” Mayorkas said. “Just this month, a young girl died by drowning, a six-month-old was thrown into the river, and two young children were dropped from a wall and left in the desert alone.”
“There can be no doubt that children are exceptionally vulnerable when placed in the hands of smugglers. There is grave risk they will be exploited and harmed. I applaud our heroic Border Patrol agents who have saved lives this week and every week, while putting their own lives at risk for the greater good of the country.”
It comes after a video released by a Border Patrol official in New Mexico showed human smugglers dropping two young girls over a 14-foot-tall border barrier before abandoning them.
The smugglers were seen via night-vision cameras leaving the children, aged 3 and 5, in the middle of the New Mexico desert “miles from the nearest residence,” said Border Patrol sector chief Gloria Chavez.
According to a news release from Border Patrol, the two girls were sisters from Ecuador. When agents came upon them, they rendered aid, officials said, before they were taken to a nearby hospital for further evaluation and were later “medically cleared.” The young girls were then put in a temporary holding facility.
metmike: In today's world, everything we believe is based on believing words and manufactured realities/facts, usually from our favorite political sources that tell the news the way that we like to hear it and WHAT WE WANT TO BELIEVE! Not on observations of what is right in front of us!
"To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by U.S. policies over the years, that’s driving migration in the first place."
metmike: I'm for greatly increasing foreign aid for humanitarian assistance in other countries! The author says, in the headline that there is no border crisis..............but then admits, there really is one but wants to define it so that it allows them to twist the meaning to make it sound like its different than the made up Republican crisis...............even though it's the same thing. How we tackle the REAL crisis can take different paths but playing politics, with each side claiming the other is lying about the crisis, then telling us about THEIR parties version of the crisis tells us about the HUGE CRISIS in American politics today.
No one is holding American employers to account for their willingness to hire millions of unauthorized immigrants.
By Christopher Landau
Mr. Landau served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/opinion/us-migrants-jobs.html
metmike: This is a great point...............but how about this thought........what if the unauthorized immigrants were not here in the first place?
If those jobs could not be filled by American workers, then what happens? The laws of supply and demand kick in. The employers have no choice but to INCREASE the pay for those jobs to attract the employees they need to do that work. Either that, or they go out of business and so they DO increase the wages for LEGAL Americans, which also reduces unemployment.
Allowing unauthorized immigrants in causes higher unemployment, lower wages. The biggest determinant on wages in this sector is the amount of employment. If you want the best way for the minimum wage to go up without government interference, cause the economy to have full unemployment. Though there would be more potential tax revenue from somebody in this tax bracket being taxed vs not paying taxes, it does not work out that way. The lower income brackets that fill ALL these types of jobs receive MANY more government benefits than is covered by their very small tax payments. But the profound reality in the previous paragraph is irrefutable.
Let me emphasize again.... I am for increasing legal immigration in the US and extremely for helping poor countries and poor people with humanitarian aid and projects that promote prosperity IN THEIR COUNTRIES!
If I were in a poverty stricken country, and a country like the US was a few hunderd miles away, it would take a real force to keep me and my family out, as long as I knew there was a reward for the effort. Remove the reward and the problem goes away.
I've always said the 1st step is to go after employers who knowingly hire illegals. Make it easy for employers to verify citizenship, and if they don't make an effort, hit them hard. It would only take a few examples before the rest got the idea.
Next, make absolutely certain that government benefits of any kind are not available to illegal immigrants.
Take away the reasons to be here, not only will they stop coming, the ones already here will leave.
Then, natural market forces will drive up wapes,