In a data dump Friday, the Biden administration announced that more than a quarter million people crossed the border illegally in December – the highest ever recorded. The timing of this release was designed to bury the news, not that it mattered, since the mainstream media have ignored the growing border crisis with fierce determination.
But that’s not the worst of it. Border deaths also reached all-time highs. That news is so bad, the “most transparent administration in history” tried to keep it hidden altogether, coughing it up only in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. When that data did come out … crickets.
This silence is particularly galling, given that Democrats were screaming bloody murder about border deaths during the Trump administration.
The publicly released news showed that Border Patrol agents stopped 251,487 illegal crossers in December. That’s a 7% increase from November, a 40% increase from the year before, and a 240% increase from December 2020.
Keep in mind that it’s not like Border Patrol agents caught a quarter million trying to sneak into the U.S. In Biden’s open-border world, illegal immigrants cross the border and then wait patiently wait for border agents to pick them up, process them in border facilities, and release them into the country, often with the sub-rosa help of NGOs. The Biden administration has turned illegal immigration into a well-oiled machine.
In addition to the 251,487 are what the government politely termed “got-aways.” These are the illegals who do sneak across the border and avoid border patrol agents because they have a good reason to expect that they’d be expelled. The number of got-aways over just the past two years is estimated at 1 million – which would make them the 10th largest city in the country. How many of them are gangbangers? Terrorists? Criminals? Who knows?
Incredibly, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller said that “The December update shows our new border enforcement measures are working.”
A better description is an invasion, one aided and abetted by the Biden administration, the Democratic party, and the legacy media that has covered it up.
It’s also a deadly one for the migrants themselves.
Over the last fiscal year, 880 immigrants died trying to get into the U.S. That is the highest number of deaths since data became available, according to numbers obtained by the Epoch Times through a FOIA request.
The second-largest number of migrant deaths occurred the year before, when 566 perished.
To be clear, Democrats have not, nor has Biden, said that Biden has blood on his hands for the deaths caused by his open border disgrace. They haven’t said anything. But they should be shouting their outrage from the rooftops.
In July 2019, a photo of the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martínez and his infant daughter, Angie Valeria, who had drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico into Texas, came to light.
Here’s a sampling of how Democrats and their media protectors responded to this:
Kamala Harris: “Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ That is inhumane. Children are dying. This is a stain on our moral conscience.”
Beto O’Rourke: “Trump is responsible for these deaths.”
Cory Booker: “These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s inhumane and immoral immigration policy.”
Joe Biden: “This image is gut-wrenching. The cruelty we’re seeing at our border is unconscionable.”
Chuck Schumer: “You (Trump) are head of the executive branch. You control what’s happening at the border.”
Los Angeles Times: “If we, as a nation, do not raise our voices in collective outrage, we are complicit.”
Vox.com: The photo “shows the true nature of Trump’s immigration policy.”
Keep in mind that 2019 had one of the fewest number of deaths at the border on record.
Here’s an idea. Demand that these people explain why immigrant deaths under Trump were a tragedy, but the far greater number of deaths under Biden are perfectly acceptable.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Please email editor-tippinsights@technometrica.com
