Every Week, Illegal Border Crossings Dwarf Caravan That’s ‘Hundreds Of Miles Away’
Media commentary on the migrant caravan, and President Donald Trump’s response to it, has frequently focused on the fact that it remains hundreds of miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
However, the caravan is just a small part of a bigger wave of ongoing illegal immigration from Central America that crashes against the southwest border every day.
Every week, the number of people arrested crossing the southwest border illegally dwarfs the roughly 4,000 migrants traveling in the caravan.
The massive procession of migrants winding through Mexico may be weeks away from the southwest border, but a “caravan”-sized number of people cross into the U.S. illegally every single day.
That fact has been overshadowed by coverage of the 4,000-strong caravan and President Donald Trump’s reaction to it, particularly his deployment of thousands of active duty troops to three border states. Commentators are quick to note that the caravan is still hundreds of miles from the nearest U.S. port of entry, and its members are unlikely to swarm across the border when it does arrive.
But the caravan is only a small — if highly publicized — part of a much larger phenomenon that has completely swamped the U.S. asylum system.
After falling to historic lows in the early months of the Trump administration, illegal immigration across the southwest border has risen in nearly every single month since, driven largely by a wave of people traveling together as families. Arrests of so-called “family units” — the vast majority of them from Central America — have now reached unprecedented levels, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures.
In October, the Border Patrol arrested 23,121 migrant family members, the highest one-month total ever recorded. It was a 39 percent jump over the 16,658 such migrants arrested in September, which was also a record for a single month.
When the family unit arrests are added to other categories — single adults and unaccompanied minors — the total number of people caught trying to cross the southwest border illegally in October was about 51,000, or 1,700 per day.
That means the number of migrants arrested along the southwest border in an average week — 11,900 — is about three times as many people traveling in the highly publicized caravan. Put differently, the equivalent of about 13 caravans is caught after crossing the border illegally every month.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/12/illegal-border-crossings-week-caravan/
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/12/illegal-border-crossings-week-caravan/