IN THIS ISSUE:
1. 1.7 million Illegal Border Crossings Last 12 Months
2. Border Crisis A Problem of Mr. Biden’s Own Making
3. US Border Crisis Is Now A Global Phenomenon
4. Murder Rate Exploded In 2020, Continues In 2021
Overview – 1.7 million Illegal Border Crossings Last 12 Months
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported last week it has arrested around 1.7 million people for illegal crossings at the southern border with Mexico between October 2020 and September 2021. This is an all-time high with migrants from Mexico making up the largest group of nationals arrested. More than 608,000 Mexican nationals were arrested followed by 367,000 arrests of migrants from countries other than Mexico and Central America and 309,000 Honduran nationals, the CBP reported.
Illegal crossings began rising in late 2020 but skyrocketed in the months after President Biden took office. As CBP arrests increased this past spring, Biden described the rise as consistent with historical seasonal norms. But the busiest months came during the sweltering heat of July and August, when more than 200,000 migrants were taken into custody.
The highest number of apprehensions were made at the Rio Grande Valley sector that stretches along the southern border of Texas and Mexico, totaling 549,000, more than two times the figure at the Del Rio sector which made the second-highest number of arrests, according to the latest CBP report. The arrest figures shown above do not accurately reflect the total number of migrants who get into this country every year because many make it into the US without being arrested.
Border Crisis A Problem of President Biden’s Own Making
President Biden’s handling of migrants at the US-Mexico border has caused a great deal of criticism for the administration, particularly after its controversial response to Haitian migrants camped at the Texas border last month. According to The Washington Post, US authorities took into custody more than 1.3 million migrants at the southern border between January and September this year. Biden had promised to be more accepting of immigrants when he campaigned for the top job.
Yet border enforcement has now become a major political liability for Biden, and the president’s handling of immigration remains his worst-polling issue.
During President-elect Biden’s transition to the White House, he said he wanted to “move cautiously” on immigration policy and avoid ending up “with 2 million people on our border.”
Once in office, however, Biden quickly halted construction on the border wall, ended President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, reversed key asylum restrictions and announced a 100-day pause on most deportations and enforcement by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Biden administration announced plans earlier this month to bring back President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy next month after dropping the Trump-era policy in January, according to the Associated Press. The policy requires asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico until their immigration hearings in the US. The Mexican government must agree to the policy for the Biden administration to reinstate it. President Biden unilaterally rejected Trump’s policies upon taking office. Now he’s having to reinstate an increasing number of them.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Customs and Border Protection chief nominee Chris Magnus repeated his stance that the rise in illegal border crossings is “one of the most serious problems” facing the US. He said Congress could help the CBP manage the problem by increasing resources and immigration judges, according to Reuters.
The bottom line is this crisis is entirely of President Biden’s making. Had he left President Trump’s immigration policies in effect, this crisis which has overburdened all of our border agents would not have happened. Yet President Biden rejected almost all of Trump’s policies across the board and offered migrants an open invitation to come to America. While it is a crime to enter the US illegally, and there have been at least 1.7 million arrests, the US Attorney General effectively admitted last week that none of these migrants are being prosecuted. This is a travesty!
US Border Crisis Is Now A Global Phenomenon & Out of Control
As noted above, Mexico continues to be the single largest source for illegal immigrants; yet as I point out above, the numbers from Central America and Honduras have also exploded. Now, we’re seeing immigrants from many parts of the world, beyond Central and South America.
“Migration to the U.S.-Mexico border is now truly global,” said Cris Ramón, an independent immigration consultant in Washington. “The implications for immigration policy require a far more comprehensive approach because it’s not enough to say you have to deter migration from Mexico or Central America. This has become a far more complex problem for the administration to deal with.”
In the fiscal years between 2012 and 2020, border arrests averaged about 540,000. While this may sound like a lot, the figures for 2020 and 2021 are estimated to be more than three times that amount. The extraordinary influx has produced a series of crises for the administration, starting this spring with record numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing without parents who were crowded shoulder to shoulder into Border Patrol tents.
Immigrant advocates who backed Biden’s candidacy have soured on his presidency lately, with several staging a virtual walkout last weekend during a meeting with White House policy advisors. Biden’s proposals for a major immigration overhaul are stalled in Congress, and Republicans are planning to use his dismal border record as a weapon in next year’s midterm elections.
The Biden administration has responded to criticism of the soaring arrest numbers by noting that it continues to use the “Title 42” – immediate expulsion for health protection – public health policy to rapidly expel most adult border crossers to Mexico or their home countries. Of the 1.7 million detained during the 2021 fiscal year, 61% were expelled under Title 42, the CBP data shows.
It should be noted that the large number of expulsions have led to a significant increase in repeat crossing attempts by migrants who are turned back, so the number of distinct individuals taken into custody is lower than the number of arrests recorded. Recidivism rates have exceeded 25% in recent months, twice as high as in previous years, according to CBP figures.
US Murder Rate Exploded In 2020, Continues In 2021
By now, we all know the US murder rate exploded in 2020, up almost 30% last year as compared to 2019, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Experts are not sure what caused the sudden spike in US murders. Most assume it must be linked to the COVID- 19 pandemic somehow, but the connections are not clear. The bad news we learned recently is the high murder rate has continued so far in 2021, although the rate of increase this year is not quite as high as last year.
The FBI released its Uniform Crime Report statistics at the end of September and estimated there were 21,570 murders in the United States last year, an increase of 29.4% from 2019.
The data show the murder rate rising to its highest level in the summer of 2020 and then remaining above normal the rest of the year. The jump is the biggest since this data started being collected in the current format in the 1960s.
The question is, why? Part of the reason is nationwide unrest was unleashed last year after George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, died in police custody on May 25, 2020. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned him down by placing a knee on his neck and back for more than nine minutes as Floyd and onlookers called on the police to stop. Chauvin, 45, was found guilty in April on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.
Footage of Floyd’s death in police custody set off a wave of national outrage, leading to protests in major cities across the nation, many of which became violent as protesters rioted, looted stores, destroyed property, burned buildings and clashed with police.
Rioting in Minneapolis resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, with many buildings destroyed and never replaced. The Black Lives Matter movement helped lead the protests in the US and around the world, with widespread calls to “defund the police.” Some Democrats embraced the defund the police messaging too.
The rise in violence also occurred amid the global COVID-19 pandemic which, according to Johns Hopkins University, has killed 688,000 people in the US and 4.75 million people worldwide.
The coronavirus pandemic was accompanied by lockdown orders from many governors and mayors, schools being shut down, rises in unemployment and economic uncertainty and more. Drug overdose deaths in 2020 rose to roughly 93,000 – also a 29% increase from 2019.
The FBI said in its late September report that “for the first time in four years, the estimated number of violent crimes in the nation increased when compared with the previous year’s statistics,” with an overall 5.6% increase in violent crime in 2020 and 1.3 million violent crimes recorded. The Bureau said aggravated assault offenses rose 12.1% and the volume of “murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses” increased by 29.4% last year.
The point is, the record high murder rate in the US continues to rise in 2021, although the rate of increase is not quite as high as last year. But it’s still rising and we should be very concerned.
All the best,
Gary D. Halbert
© Halbert Wealth Management
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