Biden May See Illegal Border Crossings Hit 7Mln by 2024 if No Action Taken, Ex-Officials Say
© AP Photo / Dario Lopez-Mills
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EL PASO (Sputnik) - The number of border apprehensions under President Joe Biden’s watch could reach a record seven million by the end of his first term if the administration continues to do nothing to deter the influx of illegal migrants, former US officials told Sputnik.
Nearly 3 million migrants have illegally crossed the US southern border since Biden took office. The US has already recorded 1.5 million illegal border crossings since the federal government’s 2022 fiscal year began eight months ago in October, including three consecutive monthly highs in March (222,339), April (235,478), and May (239,416).
The United States hit a 20-year record high of 1.7 million illegal migrants apprehended on the southern border in the 2021 fiscal year. The numbers spiked dramatically after Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, which has provided Republicans with ammunition ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections in November, and the subsequent 2024 presidential campaign.
"By the end of the Biden administration, by the time it ends in 2024, we'll be at probably pushing 7 million people, and that is just something that has never happened, not even during the Ellis Island peak of immigration in this country," former Texas Department of Public Safety intelligence analyst Todd Bensman told Sputnik. "This is the worst mass migration, border crisis in US history, by far dwarfing anything in the last 20 years."
Although climate change, poverty, and government corruption are often cited as some of the key factors driving US mass migration to the southern border, Biden's lack of action is the primary driver, Bensman added.
"As long as you have the White House perfectly okay with having millions and millions of people flooding in over the border, it's gonna happen," Bensman said. "The one factor that we have control over in the immediate near term and long term is whether we're going to let them in. So that becomes the only real root cause that matters."
A migrant's decision making is all based on whether it is worth spending up to $10,000 to attempt to get smuggled into the United States, he added.
"If the answer is 'yes,' they're coming," Bensman said. "Climate change didn't change suddenly, and all those government officials didn't experience an outbreak of integrity all of a sudden. Homicide rates didn't just suddenly go up, in a lot of cases they went down."
Bensman pointed out that Democratic presidents like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both made efforts to stop mass migration on the US southern border, unlike current mainstream Democrats.
In June, the US Supreme Court authorized the Biden administration to end the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy that required non-Mexican nationals who cross the land border into the United States to stay in Mexico during the course of their removal proceedings. In addition, the Biden administration has attempted to rescind the Title 42 policy, which serves as a tool to deter migrants at the southern border due to public health concerns from the coronavirus, but a federal court ordered the administration to keep the policy in place.
Bensman said the number of migrants the US is exempting from Title 42 is still so great that it stands as a very powerful enticement to the rest of the world.
"We're going to have this huge population that will be living here that'd be too large to round up and deport, even if there's a will, and 40 plus percent of all of those are coming from 150 different other countries besides Central America and Mexico," Bensman said.
Bensman mentioned some of the migrants coming through the US border are from countries with terrorism issues or countries in Africa where there are conflicts between warlords and tribal militias.
Moreover, Bensman said record-setting mass migration will also have immediate impacts on school districts, such as increasing tax rates and overcrowding.
"I don't see the administration taking any significant steps to shut it down or reverse the trend, which is another thing that's really unusual about this mass migration crisis. It's the first time that an American president has been ok with it, has not tried everything they have in their power to shut it down," Bensman said.
Biden Must Take Action to Avoid Humanitarian Disaster
Former US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sector chief Victor Manjarrez told Sputnik the Biden administration needs to take action in order to avoid a disastrous event like the one that left 50 illegal migrants dead after a smuggler abandoned them inside a tractor-trailer near the Texas city of San Antonio in sweltering heat conditions.
"I hope someone from the Biden Administration starts to listen before we have something worse than the San Antonio tragedy," Manjarrez said.
Manjarrez said he has heard the southern border crisis called a humanitarian crisis, but he believes it is now a man-made disaster due to Biden's lack of action in dealing with the issue.
He warned about the number of illegal migrants passing through the Big Bend sector, a very remote area with rough terrain on the Texas-Mexico border.
"There has been a reliance on the use of geography as a deterrence, [but] the flows are so heavy, that's no longer a deterrence," Manjarrez said. "We're one bad weather event away for having a disaster in Big Bend. Wait until we get like a heat wave, it'll make San Antonio look like nothing."
Manjarrez, citing his own source, said US immigration enforcement sees indications from Central America and Mexico that the crisis on the US southern border will worsen soon.
He also said the record-high number of illegal migrants arriving at the US southern border is taking a toll on Border Patrol agents. He said that in April he was in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas where many of the migrants are crossing into the United States illegally.
"I had the opportunity to look on the line, look at the processes, and I've never seen so many agents with like their eyeballs sunk in, you know, like when you're exhausted. They don't look well," Manjarrez said.
The former sector chief said he expects the Biden administration to see a second-consecutive record year for the number of illegal migrants apprehended on the US southern border because there is no deterrent effect.
"The tools that have been taken away from the border patrol in terms of able to deliver some kind of consequence... Right now the consequence is you come up claiming political asylum and the government doesn't have the ability to hold you, so they release you pending your case," Manjarrez said.
Regarding Texas Governor Greg Abbott's order authorizing the national guard and state law enforcement to apprehend and return illegal migrants to Mexico, Manjarrez said the move could make them vulnerable to lawsuits because they will not be able to make determinations for asylum claims.
With respect to Biden’s program to fast-track migration of Ukrainian refugees arriving on the US southern border, the former CBP sector chief said he expects the situation to be exploited by other Europeans seeking to come to the United States. Ukrainian refugees have been treated better than other migrants coming into the United States, he added.
More than 33,000 Ukrainian migrants have come to the United States since March, after the start of Russia's special military operation in the country, including 21,153, in April, after a Biden order welcoming up to 100,000.
Bensman said the arrival of Ukrainian refugees on the southern border exacerbates the current problem.
"The Ukrainians certainly do not need to be coming over the border," Bensman said. "For one thing, the administration has made it legal for them to be admitted into the country... they just don't want to wait. They can get quicker access at the border, because they're just letting everybody in."
Bensman pointed out that Ukrainian refugees do not have to come to the United States because the European Union has offered Ukrainians refuge for three years with food and housing subsidies and education.
