They have received the message loud and clear. Bring a child and you will be released.
AUSTIN Texas (Texas Insider Report) With five months remaining in the federal governments 2019 Fiscal Year 531711 people have already been apprehended or deemed inadmissible at the Southwest U.S. Border more than the totals for all of Fiscal Year 2018 (521090) or 2017 (415517).
And those are just the people encountered or detained by Border Patrol.
In fact no U.S. government agency or entity can say exactly how many people are actually crossing the border undetected.
Yes Central Americans and other foreigners are continuing to pour into the United States and theyre doing so at an accelerating pace the latest numbers from U.S. Customs & Border Protection show.
The 109144 immigrants encountered in April 2019 is up from 103719 in March 2019 and represent a 113.3 increase from the 51168 apprehended or deemed inadmissible in April 2018.
Of the 109144 April figure in which 98977 were apprehended and 10167 were deemed inadmissible:
- 8897 were unaccompanied children
- 58474 family units; and
- 31606 single adults
The table below taken straight from U.S. Customs & Border Protection website shows the sharp decline in apprehensions and inadmissibles shortly after Donald Trump took office in January 2017.
In April 2017 for example only 15798 people were stopped at the border a Trump-era low. But that number has been rising since then escalating sharply at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2019 in October.
Border officials say that illegal immigrants now know they can take advantage of lax U.S. immigration laws as well as court rulings that require their release into the interior of the United States on only a promise to appear for an immigration hearing on a date most often years in the future.
As Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) noted at a hearing last Wednesday the U.S. Border Patrol is overwhelmed and no longer has the capacity to detain so many people and are forced to release some of them.
Cornyn pointed to a new phenomenon" -- the rapid rise in the number of large groups 100 or more people arriving together at the border making the demanding jobs of agents on patrol all the more difficult.
This was most strikingly on display this last week when a group of more than 400 migrants presented themselves in the small town of Sunland Park New Mexico just across the border from El Paso Texas" Cornyn said.
The increased apprehensions have led to crowded Border Patrol stations and on certain days over the past few months CBP has had more than 14000 people in their custody."
Cornyn noted that CBP simply does not have the facilities or resources to manage those kinds of numbers."
Testifying at that same hearing U.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said:
For the first time in Border Patrol history nearly half of the adults we apprehended in April brought children.
They have received the message loud and clear Bring a child and you will be released" Provost said.
As we sit here today thousands more are being encouraged to bring or send their children to our border based on smugglers false promises of a safe and easy journey.
Provost joined the Border Patrol 25 years ago.
I could never have envisioned that today agents would spend at least 40 of their time as child care professionals medical care givers bus drivers and food service workers" Provost said.
She noted that so far this year agents have rescued more than 2200 migrants endangered by ruthless" smugglers.
So far this year weve apprehended 248197 family unit aliens and 44779
unaccompanied children (UACs).
As of Sunday only seven months into the (fiscal) year we have now surpassed the total Southwest border apprehensions of every fiscal year since 2009.
The number of family units and UACs has skyrocketed to 64 of southern border apprehensions Provost said.
