US Border Crisis: 100,000 Illegal Immigrants in 60 Days
Smuggling groups exploit loopholes in US immigration laws amid congressional inaction
BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON
TheEpochTimes.com
December 13, 2018
WASHINGTON—A caravan’s worth of illegal immigrants cross the border every day—as has been the case for years. But the numbers are currently on a sharp upward trend.
The recent caravan of around 8,000 migrants mostly from Honduras—an anomaly because of its size and propensity for violence—created a media frenzy for a couple of weeks, but while the coverage has waned, the illegal border crossings haven’t.
In the past two months alone, more than 100,000 people have been apprehended for illegally crossing into the United States. That’s the highest number for October and November in four of the past five years (the end of 2016 spiked before President Donald Trump took office).
During fiscal 2017, almost 400,000 people were apprehended along the southwest border after crossing illegally—averaging out to almost 1,100 per day. A further 124,500 turned up at ports of entry without documentation.
Driving the increase are family units from Central America.
A snapshot of the border crossings on Dec. 3 highlights the trend, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan.
“The highest numbers of arrivals at our southwest border in years—3,029 illegal entries and inadmissible persons—arrived at our border last Monday. 85 percent of them crossed illegally,” McAleenan said during a Senate oversight hearing on Dec. 11.
He said the numbers included 1,731 members of family groups and 350 unaccompanied children.
“We will more than double last year’s record number of family units at this rate,” he said. A family unit consists of at least one child and one adult.
Less than a decade ago, most illegal border-crossers were single adult males from Mexico.
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