The year was 2018. The United States was facing yet another wave of illegal immigration across the southwest border.
I would say it was like Groundhog Day, but things seemed very different then. In past years, most illegal immigrants were adult men from Mexico. Now, the majority were from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, but over 130 different nationalities were mixed in. Thousands of families were entering illegally, then surrendering to the first agents they can find to claim asylum.
Or at least they claim to be families. It’s nearly impossible to know if a child is related to the adult without conducting in-depth interviews. And with thousands of illegal entries per day, agents don’t have time to conduct those interviews.
Cartels make billions smuggling migrants into the U.S. from around the world. More importantly, the cartels leverage the massive volume of migrants to overwhelm Border Patrol resources and create voids in border security. This allows them to easily smuggle narcotics and criminals into the U.S.
Ever wondered why a migrant family fully intent on surrendering and asking for asylum would wait until after dark to cross the border? It is because the cartels control the crossings.
Word was out that if you cross into the U.S. as a family and claim asylum, you will get released into the U.S. within a few days, or even hours. Intel indicated that human traffickers were now selling or renting children to create families to exploit this asylum loophole. By the end of 2018, the U.S. Border Patrol was consistently arresting more “family groups” than single adults. The agents knew these weren’t all real families, but they lack the time to prove it.
Something else in 2018 else seemed very different, too. The presidential administration at the time actually cared. Every president has said that border security was important, but this president was making it a priority. For the first time in my career, a president was acknowledging that border security is national security. He made it clear to his entire team that we simply must know who and what is entering our homeland, and that we should listen to our career border security experts.
While the public attention was directed toward the construction of the border wall system, a significant effort was underway behind the scenes to build a multination coalition throughout the western hemisphere. It was a priority to stem this asylum-fraud loophole and protect children from exploitation. If we could ensure due process while dramatically reducing the fraud, then the number of illegal entries would decline and agents would have more time to devote to enforcement — to include investigating the fake families and child trafficking that our system had allowed.
By early 2019, DHS was rolling out the Migrant Protection Protocols, more commonly known as “Remain in Mexico.” Other programs were also being unveiled, including expedited asylum reviews at the border, foreign electronic identification verifications to expedite repatriation, and efforts to establish cooperative asylum agreements with several countries.
Illegal entries dropped dramatically. From a high of over 84,400 family unit apprehensions in a single month, by December, that number had dropped to 8,595. By March 2020, it dropped below 3500. Agents spent less time processing and more on enforcement. Child traffickers were identified and charged. In one case, the same child was forced to make the journey from Central America repeatedly with a new “family” each time. Border security was getting better every day.
The year is now 2021. The Biden administration stopped all border wall system construction and shut down every effective program developed during the prior four years. Catch-and-release is back and expanded. Tens of thousands of FMUAs have been released into the U.S. with a simple notice to self-report to ICE once they get to their destination. Others are issued a Notice to Appear in court later and then released. Still, others are being granted parole into the U.S. under a provision of law that is only supposed to be used on a limited case-by-case basis. The equivalent of a large 2019-like caravan now crosses the border illegally every day. More than 1.6 million illegal immigrants from 150 different nations were encountered illegally entering the U.S. in FY2021. Of those, 479,728 claimed to be part of a family group. There were also approximately 400,000 known instances in which individuals got away.
Yet DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insists the border is secure.
I asked a current DHS career official how we lost control of the border so quickly. This is what he said: “The former administration detailed career experts to a multitude of positions to ensure that the components’ voices were heard. This administration has a bunch of inexperienced appointees who’ve never worked in the government dictating immigration [and border] policy from afar, totally ignoring warnings from career experts.”
Border security is national security.
Retired U.S. Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott is a distinguished senior fellow for border security at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
