Just when you think the situation at the Southern border can't get worse, it does. This year has set records in illegal immigration, with nearly 1.6 million illegal migrants arrested and over 144,000 unaccompanied alien children coming across the Southwest border. I spoke with Andrew Arthur, Resident Fellow in Law and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies about just how much of a crisis this influx of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally really is.
These high numbers of illegal entries you say reveal things that are much worse. What should we truly be concerned about?
The biggest problem is the surge of migrants who aren’t from Mexico, or Central American countries. About 22% of all of the migrants who were apprehended at the Southwest border are from somewhere other than Mexico and Central America.
What do we think is driving these numbers? These are major changes in the percentages, right?
The big change this year is the Biden administration. When Biden took office, he halted the “Remain in Mexico” policy and third country agreements that the U.S. has with Central American countries allowing our regional partners to grant protection to individuals who are ostensibly coming into the United States, seeking asylum. His administration also stated that it didn't like what the Trump administration was doing… honestly, I don't know if the Biden administration has a policy to control illegal migration at the Southern border.
The U.S. Government and border patrol agencies don't have experience in keeping track of illegal immigrants coming in from dozens of countries?
It's truly vetting on the fly, which is the way vetting is going at the Southwest border. There are significant errors that are made, overworked border patrol agents can not identify people, but again, that’s only the people they caught. There’s still about 400,000 people that they never caught and the worse they are, the more likely they are to evade border patrol and have some sort of support system in the United States to help them not get caught.
