America Facing Historic Border Crisis

U.S. Border Patrol says people from 44 nations are illegally entering the U.S. across our southern border as the media censors the worst crisis in 10 years. Trump is right to declare a national emergency.

By Mark Anderson

HIDALGO COUNTY, Texas—The Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where so far this year 25,000 illegal immigrants have evaded apprehension, isn’t just dealing with the criminal elements that ride the wave of caravans of Central Americans illegally crossing into the U.S. The valley is also plagued by a meddlesome local media that engages in stereotyping and melodrama intended to shame the people who could do the most—the U.S. Border Patrol—to halt the border crisis into accepting an almost constant exodus of people trudging through Mexico into the U.S.

Valley media also downplays or ignores the fact that, in addition to the 25,000 who got away, another 120,000 illegal entrants have already been caught so far in this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2018, according to Rio Grande Valley Sector Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz. If such numbers aren’t abated, over 1 million people could cross the southern border into the U.S. by year’s end.

With detention facilities stretched to the breaking point and Border Patrol, immigration judgeships, and other key positions still understaffed, many Central American adults and children are being simply given a bus ticket so they can freely wander about the U.S. without even a court hearing in the hopes that they’ll return for a hearing later.

But most importantly, as Ortiz told The Epoch Times regarding the backgrounds of those flooding into the U.S.: “We actually don’t know who they are. So far, here in south Texas, we’ve apprehended folks from 44 different countries. These are from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, you name it.”

The alternative newspaper The Epoch Times and other alternative media, including AFP, have long noted that the southern border, especially in Texas, is where people from across the world enter the U.S., usually illegally. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anything other than an occasional blurb buried in the back of Valley newspapers about the fact that this isn’t just a Central American invasion—rather, it has involved people traipsing into America from as many as 75 countries over the last 10 years.

This writer, having lived in the valley for over 13 years, rode with civilian border scouts in 2008, among other border news-gathering assignments. This includes monitoring the area’s conventional media reports. The implication of nearly every written news report and broadcast in this heavily Hispanic region is that all Hispanics, by definition, must be in automatic solidarity and could only believe in open borders with few if any conditions, as if a Hispanic conservative who believes in defending the border is an impossibility.

Tell that to the 500 or more ardent Trump supporters who lined the streets of McAllen when the president visited the valley on Jan. 10. These supporters, the majority of whom were Hispanic—with some Hispanic children holding signs that said “Finish the Wall”—expressed strong support for much stricter border defense. They easily equaled in number the anti-Trump, anti-wall protestors who turned out that day, some of whom apparently had been bused in from more distant locales.

Valley media did its best to flush the big Hispanic turnout for President Donald Trump down the memory hole. Then, in late March, it trotted out an allegedly accurate poll, conducted by the local University of Texas/RGV campus. The poll, lo and behold, suggests that three out of every four Valley citizens oppose the border wall—as if border defense policy should be based upon the shifting sands of public opinion.

The local Monitor newspaper constantly publishes photos of young children and families (although a number of children are brought in by people only claiming to be their parents) to emotionally sell the notion that the only “humane” way to deal with what appears to be the worst border breach in about 10 years is simply to maintain a more or less open border.

An open border, however, incentivizes the very human traffickers and drug traffickers that prey upon vulnerable migrant children and families for whom the local media, religious charities, and other organizations, including the Catholic Diocese, profess heartfelt concern.

Trump is at a crossroads. He did declare an emergency, vetoed an attempt by Congress to nullify the emergency, and secured $8 billion for the wall by getting already budgeted money from other accounts and not relying solely on congressional outlays, but the question is, now what?

Military resources from both state and federal levels are at the border, we’re told, but it’s not altogether clear what’s being done.

It’s time for AFP readers, not just those in border states, to make lots of phone calls to Congress, Trump, senators, state police, state representatives, and other officials to demand border sanity and defense until a sufficient wall and other longer-term measures can come to fruition.

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor. Email him at [email protected].