(Headline USA) Hundreds of dates are written on concrete-filled steel columns erected along the U.S. border with Mexico to memorialize when the Border Patrol has repaired illicit openings in the would-be barriers.
No sooner are fixes made than another column is sawed, torched and chiseled for large groups of migrants to enter, usually with no agents in sight.
The breaches stretch about 30 miles on a washboard gravel road west of Lukeville, an Arizona desert town that consists of an official border crossing, restaurant and duty-free shop.
Agents say it takes up to an hour to drive from Lukeville along the gravel road to discover breaches—a large chunk of time when tending to so many migrants in custody.
“Our officers and agents are responding to large groups of migrants, which means that some of our agents aren’t on the line, not really monitoring for some of those cuts,” said Troy Miller, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting commissioner. “If we don’t have anybody to respond, then you’re going to see what you’re seeing.”
‘UNPRECEDENTED’ NUMBERS
The number of daily arrivals is “unprecedented,” Miller said, with illegal crossings topping 10,000 some days across the border in December.
On Monday, CBP suspended cross-border rail traffic in the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso in response to migrants riding freight trains through Mexico, hopping off just before entering the U.S.
The Lukeville border crossing is closed, as is a pedestrian entry in San Diego, so that more officials can be assigned to the migrant influx.
Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time each of the U.S. government’s last two budget years.
Miller said solutions go well beyond CBP, which includes the Border Patrol, to other agencies whose responsibilities include long-term detention and asylum screenings. On cuts in the wall, Miller said Mexican authorities “need to step up.”
DERELICTION OF DUTY
The huge spike in migrants and resulting chaos at various border locations have increased frustration with the Biden administration’s immigration policies and put pressure on Congress to reach a deal on asylum.
The numbers have nudged the White House and some congressional Democrats to consider major limits to asylum as part of a deal for Ukraine aid.
Although Congress adjourned for the Christmas holiday without reaching such a deal—resulting in more record-breaking surges to pile on the Biden administration’s dubious list of achievements—Senate leaders claim that a deal is close.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., issued a rare joint statement this week indicating that negotiations were progressing.
They also met Wednesday to discuss how to advance the border policy alongside President Joe Biden’s$110 billion package of wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other national security priorities.
“We all know there’s a problem at the border,” Schumer said before sending senators home. “Our goal is, as soon as we get back, to get something done.”
McConnell said the negotiations “continue to make headway.”
CLOSING THE ‘ASYLUM’ LOOPHOLE
Senate negotiators have focused on asylum, by which the U.S. offers protection for people facing persecution in their home countries.
The senators say they are trying to ensure that migrants who have a credible claim to asylum can safely apply, but that officials can also quickly turn away those who don’t qualify.
Far-left open-borders activists have now coached all immigrants crossing the border to claim asylum with the understanding that, once they have entered into the country, the Democrat administration will do little to remove them.
Many of the illegals have coyly admitted, however, in candid interviews that they seek nothing more than economic opportunities and welfare benefits from the broken U.S. system.
But because the immigration courts are so backlogged by the time the final determination happens, many have been in the country for years, making it more difficult and expensive to deport them, even if Democrats had the political will to do so.
Critics contend that Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and others have been deliberately importing illegals in the hopes that they can permanently change the American electorate in a generation or less—depending on how strictly states police their voting rolls to prevent ineligible noncitizens from casting ballots.
In a recent town-hall with CNN, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy linked the Biden administration’s bad-faith failure to police the border with the so-called Great Replacement theory.
The senators and the Biden administration have considered toughening the so-called credible fear standard that’s used in the initial interviews to determine if migrants seeking asylum would likely have a winnable case before an immigration judge.
Open-border advocates claim the credible fear standard is deliberately low in recognition of the fact that migrants being interviewed have usually fled desperate conditions, don’t have legal representation and are still shaken by their journeys.
INCENTIVIZING ILLEGALITY
While Biden had initially proposed $14 billion to bolster border security in the national security package, Republicans have said money was not enough. They want to enshrine policy changes at the border into law to effect meaningful changes and ensure that the money is not misused by Biden officials to instead facilitate more abuse of the system.
Still, billions of dollars of funding will almost certainly be part of any deal.
Border Patrol officers are overwhelmed processing migrants who turn themselves in seeking asylum. Biden had proposed $3.1 billion for additional border agents as well more asylum officers, immigration judge teams and processing personnel.
Supporters say the money for the asylum system is crucial to addressing the backlog in immigration courts and essentially getting the process moving faster.
Biden has also suggested $1.2 billion for Customs and Border Protection officers and inspection systems to stop the flow of deadly fentanyl.
While the president also proposed funds to help communities in the U.S. that are taking in the record numbers of new arrivals, Republicans have resisted sending money to the cities, largely Democratic, that brought the problem upon themselves by encouraging abuse of the immigration system through so-called sanctuary city policies during the Trump administration.
Over and over, senators have emerged from hours of closed-door talks with an exasperated conclusion: Immigration policy is complicated.
“Millions of decisions,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. “Underneath every big idea is 100 smaller decisions that all have to be made, and every one is complicated.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said: “It’s interconnected. So if you press in one side and it pops out the other, it takes time to get this right.”
One of the toughest issues to resolve has been how to dissuade would-be illegals from even embarking on their journeys to the U.S. in the first place, something that the Biden administration’s lax border policies and generous treatment of the invaders seem to have incentivized, along with the legions of George Soros-funded activists who encourage and abet migrant journeys.
The journey itself has become a massive industry, employing not only legions of activists from non-governmental organizations, but also coyotes who assist in navigating would-be illegals to and across the border for thousands of dollars.
It has become something akin to a cottage tourism industry, with services even running videos on platforms like TikTok to promote the migrant experience.
Meanwhile, it is tied with other illegal activities, such as drug– and human-trafficking that also are potentially large economic drivers in the criminal underworld on both sides of the border.
A WORLD OF PROBLEMS
Senators have discussed ways to encourage people to apply for asylum before they arrive at the border—either in their home country, or if that’s not plausible, a country they travel through on their way to the U.S.
The Biden administration had launched a new system earlier this year that encourages people seeking asylum to schedule an appointment, via a smartphone app, to seek entry at the border.
In talks, the White House has also insisted on keeping in place its ability to allow 30,000 people a month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti entry into the U.S. if they have a financial sponsor and fly into the country.
The idea is to create a more orderly, efficient asylum system that reduces chaos at the border.
But Republicans have rarely, if ever, objected to allowing entry to those who follow the legal process in good faith for gaining access to the country for legitimate reasons due to their corrupt and oppressive governments.
Meanwhile, record numbers of migrants are still arriving from all across the globe, including China and the Middle East, and several dangerous known terrorists have been detected. Illegal crossings topped 10,000 some days in December.
Arrests of non-Mexicans topped 75,000, nearly quadruple the number from a year ago and more than half of all sector arrests.
Senegalese people accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, while arrests of people from Guinea and India each topped 4,000. Agents have encountered migrants from about four dozen Eastern hemisphere countries.
FINDING A PERMANENT FIX
At a sprawl of white tents near Tucson International Airport that was built for about 1,000 people, some are flown to the Texas border for processing. Others are released within two days, as mandated by a court order in the Tucson sector. CBP policy limits detention to 72 hours.
Most are released with notices to appear in immigration courts, which are backlogged with more than 3 million cases.
Negotiators have run into trouble in the talks when it comes to enforcement measures. One potential compromise would set a threshold for the number of border crossings, and once the number is reached, stricter enforcement measures would take effect.
Under that system, if the crossings get too high authorities would shut down the border for asylum claims, enable fast-track removals of migrants who have already entered unlawfully, and detain some migrants while they are screened for valid asylum claims.
Funding in the package could also go to bolstering immigration enforcement, including detention facilities, according to one person familiar with the private negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Opponents of border enforcement argue that some of the restrictions under discussion could just push the build-up of migrants south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We’re turning Mexico into a staging area for migrants moving north,” said Dylan Corbett, who heads the Hope Border Institute, in a call with reporters. “Mexico doesn’t have the infrastructure to be able to deal with this.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who has been central to the negotiations, said that the potentially lasting impact of their work hangs over the talks.
“A mistake here will matter for many years,” she said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
