"We are truly in a crisis," former President Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said over the weekend.
The first thing Johnson would look at each morning on the job, he explained, were the previous day's border apprehension numbers. "I know that a thousand [apprehensions] overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like," he said.
That staggering figure is quickly becoming reality. Last month, U.S. immigration officers apprehended more than 75,000 individuals—the highest number in more than a decade. Now, the total is closing in on 100,000 migrants per month.
Illegal immigration is a problem Washington has ignored for decades. The crisis America faces today, however, is categorically different than any of its past versions.
"Compared to past flows, these migrants are arriving in enormous groups unlike any we've seen before," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen writes today. "In most years, only one or two 'large groups' of more than 100 migrants would arrive at our borders. Already in this fiscal year, we've seen more than 100 such large groups."
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board explains the problem clearly. Our "broken asylum system all but guarantees entry if you bring children," they write. Smugglers know this loophole well, and it doesn't take a law enforcement expert to understand the dire humanitarian and security consequences that such a law invites.
While Congressional Democrats remain in denial, U.S. border officials "have identified 2,400 'false families' over the last year as smugglers pair adults with unrelated children," the Journal reports.
Secretary Nielsen warns that America's immigration system was not designed to handle this influx of vulnerable populations. Because of outdated laws and troubling court decisions, the majority of those who break our immigration laws will never be removed from the United States—no matter how hard our border agents work at their jobs.
"The system is breaking," she says. "As a nation, we cannot stand for this."
Tackling the border emergency at its source
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