If Trump had not signed the disastrous budget bill several weeks ago and we were still operating on a short-term CR with immigration remaining the top issue, today’s news could have strengthened Trump’s leverage. According to CBP’s preliminary figures obtained by the Washington Post, 76,325 illegal aliens were apprehended at the border in February, more than any other month in over a decade since the decline of migration from Mexico. A record 40,325 family units arrived, blowing out the previous records by almost 10,000. Sadly, Trump already signed away his leverage to force a national dialogue over this issue.
As a nation, we are left debating presidential power from an obscure statute that enables the president to obtain a mere $2.5 billion for partial fencing to deal with a policy-driven invasion. The joke is that even if Trump had full unity behind this approach, it would do little to stop this invasion, which is strategically directed toward soft parts of our border. Unless we force a national discussion over the courts and the illegal immigration magnets that are bringing immigrants in, this entire debate is a non-sequitur. Unfortunately, without a budget deadline for another seven months, no matter how bad things get at our border, there is no mechanism through which to pressure Democrats into submission.
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A record 76,325 apprehensions for one month is truly staggering, not only because it’s the single worst month at the border since fiscal year 2008, but because almost all of these people get to stay on our dime. Projected for the whole year, this pace would result in 916,000 apprehensions. But the pace is growing every month, because the catch-and-release expands. As the Washington Post observes, “The number of migrants taken into custody last year jumped 39 percent from February to March, and a similar increase this month would push levels to 100,000 detentions or more.” That would be an annual pace of 1.2 million.
While we had years with over one million apprehensions in past decades, most of the illegal immigrants were repatriated under expedited deportation within hours. This means that a lot of them were repeat crossers and they were deported in short order. These people coming now are first-timers and are successfully embedding themselves into our country within a few days, saddling us with the permanent cost of their care.
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