ANOTHER BIDEN BORDER SCANDAL. Yesterday, the subject was the Biden administration’s covert program to relocate thousands of illegal border-crossers all around the country. Particularly damning was body camera video from security officers at a Westchester, New York, airport, who were surprised to see a plane full of migrants arrive in the middle of the night, with government contractors who accompanied the illegal immigrants stressing that the whole thing should be kept quiet.
There’s another big development, and that is who is illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. For many years, the majority of illegal crossers have been a mixture of people from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries — Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In early 2021, that changed dramatically. Starting virtually with the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the number of illegal crossers from other countries, that is, not from Mexico or the Northern Triangle, began to skyrocket. Now, in the last month, the number of crossers from other countries actually exceeded those from Mexico and the Northern Triangle.
A new report in Axios has some of the numbers. “More than 800 people from India illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into Yuma, Arizona in December,” according to Axios. “And for the second month in a row, more than 500 migrants from Turkey crossed into El Paso, Texas.” In the area around San Diego, 2,000 Russians arrived, as well as 300 Ukrainians. There were 15,000 illegal crossers from Cuba and Haiti. And the big number: In December, according to Axios, “Border Patrol agents arrested close to 53,000 migrants from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.”
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Troubling incidents abound. Last week, Border Patrol arrested five Syrian men illegally crossing the border near Hidalgo, Texas, according to a report from Fox News’s Bill Melugin. In another instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement “ordered the release of a Lebanon-born Venezuelan named Issam Bazzi, who swam the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas, and then was flagged as being on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist,” according to a Center for Immigration Studies report. (Courtesy of the Biden administration, Bazzi is now living in the Detroit area.) And look at this description from the Border Patrol of an incident last month in California:
On December 12, 2021, at approximately 9:33 p.m. PST, a Ford SUV followed by a Mercedes sedan traveling together approached the primary inspection area at the San Ysidro, California Port of Entry from Mexico at a high rate of speed. A CBP officer conducting pre-primary inspections walking in the pre-primary lane fired approximately four rounds, striking the Mercedes sedan. The Mercedes sedan collided into the Ford SUV, which had come to an abrupt stop. Both the Ford SUV and the Mercedes sedan contained a total of 18 undocumented migrants, who were all citizens of Russia.
The dangers of this surge of illegal crossers are obvious. The Biden administration does minimal checks of the identity of those who cross into the United States. Many of them throw their IDs away before they cross, in hopes they cannot be returned to their home country. There are terrorists and all sorts of criminals in the world, and there is now a relatively easy way to get into the U.S. without much scrutiny.
What is going on here? “Clearly, word is out across the globe that if you can make it to the U.S.-Mexico border to cross illegally, especially with children, you will be allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, eventually get a work permit, and access various welfare benefits (even free healthcare in California),” writes Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictions on immigration. “From what our sources say, the long haul migrants from places like Russia and India and Africa have plenty of money to fund their own trip, and often buy their own plane tickets once they get it, not having to rely on the NGOs to buy them a bus ticket. This cannot be accurately described as some kind of humanitarian crisis, and it is not unstoppable. It is pure opportunism, and it will continue until the policies are changed.”
Vaughan points out that such illegal crossings represent a high cost to the U.S., both in money and in security. And more: “This continued influx makes a mockery of our legal immigration system, and those who have paid fees and waited their turn.”
Now, put this new trend together with the Biden administration’s policy of quietly relocating illegal border-crossers in the interior of the U.S. Without sufficient vetting, and with few requirements, the U.S. government is moving thousands of people into cities and towns across the country. It doesn’t matter that many are simply seeking a better life and that most people aren’t criminals. The U.S., since the inauguration of Joe Biden, has simply thrown border security enforcement out the window. That will have consequences for years to come.
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