Month: January 2022

Forecasting 2022 at the Border

By Joe Guzzardi

Since the Biden administration hasn’t indicated that it will shift in its Southwest border policy, the U.S. can expect the surge of illegal crossers to continue throughout 2022. If change is coming, it will take the direction of even more illegal immigrants entering, and being released – clandestinely in some cases – into the interior.

During 2021’s last days, a border report revealed that the commonly cited illegal immigrant encounters of 1.7 million, the highest total since at least 1960, may be significantly understated. Border patrol agents assigned to the nine Southwest sectors said that they apprehended more than 1.9 million migrants who illegally crossed the shared border with Mexico between ports of entry during 2021. Many if not most of the 1.9 million surrendered to agents and were released, a practice known as catch and release. Another estimated 500,000 aliens avoided apprehension, the so-called “got-aways,” and snuck into the U.S. interior.

Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sanction the worst imaginable human and drug traffickers who ply their billion-dollar trades with few consequences. In December, agents came upon a stolen commercial tractor-trailer perilously overloaded with 52 people from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who had illegally crossed into the U.S. and were headed north. Other Customs and Border Protection encounters involved an SUV with seven Mexicans, and another vehicle with 12 Mexicans and Guatemalans inside, all being trafficked north from the southern border. Two days before Christmas, Eagle Pass Station agents arrested a Honduran national convicted in 2018 of sexual assault of a child, and sentenced to four years in prison. After serving only two years, the Honduran was deported, but reentered illegally. Agents said that their interactions with dangerous criminals occur daily.

Assuming the status quo – and there’s every reason to expect Biden and Mayorkas will continue their unconstitutional border agenda exactly as they did in 2021 – by the time Biden’s first term ends in 2025, nearly 10 million released illegal immigrants and 2 million got-aways will have merged into the general population. That’s millions of newcomers who will need to be provided for in a nation that has nearly 40 million Americans, about 11.4 percent of the total population, who live below the $26,695 poverty line for a four-person family.

The border is a mess, and no one knows better than Mustafa Joseph, a ten-year veteran agent who recently resigned in disgust. In his letter to Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, Joseph called out the Supreme Court, “in disarray,” on constitutional clarity issues, presumably regarding immigration. Summing up his conclusion that most Americans came to months ago, Joseph wrote: “The undocumented have gone from a fear of infringing the law to brazenly inquiring about what’s taking so long with their right to unconditional assimilation. Have we become ‘Handmaids’ to their cause? Incomprehensible… Particularly as the concept of ‘law’ becomes an increasingly nebulous moving target.” To Joseph, his job, and the U.S. government in general, is unrecognizable. In closing, Joseph wished his former boss, Ortiz, good luck dealing with the “deck of cards” he’s been dealt.

Americans who value sovereignty are rooting for Ortiz and all dedicated border patrol agents. A Rasmussen poll taken in December found that most rated 2021 as the worst year ever, and are ready to move on to better times. The nation’s collective hope is that the White House shares citizens’ disappointment with 2021’s failures, and will take giant steps forward to make 2022 a better year. Enforcing immigration laws at the border is a good place to start.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Forecasting 2022 at the Border