Border Crisis Surge: DHS Expects 500,000-800,000 Family Group Illegal Migrants in 2021

Border Crisis Surge: DHS Expects 500,000-800,000 Family Group Illegal Migrants in 2021

According to The Washington Post, phase two of the migration surge at the border could contain a lot of families:

DHS expects approximately 500,000 to 800,000 migrants to arrive as part of a family group during the 2021 fiscal year that ends in September, a quantity that would equal or exceed the record numbers who entered in 2019, according to government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Officials are racing to find facilities to house these families ahead of their release, along with additional staff to process an increase in humanitarian and asylum claims.

The estimate is based on what has already been a vertiginous increase since President Biden took office Jan. 20. This month, the number of family members taken into U.S. Customs and Border Protection [CBP] custody is on pace to reach nearly 50,000, up from 7,000 in January, the latest government data show. The highest one-month total, 88,587, was recorded in May 2019, during a year when more than 525,000 migrants arrived as part of a family group.

President Joe Biden’s administration claims it expels families back to Mexico due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the CBP data shows officials turned away “only about 10 to 20 percent” of the families.

The paperwork has overwhelmed the agents. They issue the rest of the families “a notice to appear in court.” CBP has never done that before on such a large scale.

Do you think many will follow through? I’m not getting up my hopes. Retired Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal agrees:

Villareal, who was Border Patrol chief in Arizona’s busy Tucson sector, said agents are especially concerned that the practice of releasing families with blank paperwork and without a notice to appear in court will generate more illegal crossings.

He said the Biden administration is right to look at the root causes driving people to leave Central America, but cautioned that a more “holistic approach” is needed.

“You need an enforcement aspect, and you need an investment aspect,” Villareal said. “We have to recognize this is one large system, and piecemeal efforts only undermine one aspect.”

“If you’re securing and investing in Central America, and giving people the ability to apply for asylum in their home countries with increased immigrant visas, there is a long-term benefit to be had, because not only will it help secure the border, it’ll better formalize legal migration,” he added. “But if you want to further legal migration, you just can’t do that part and parcel. You have to maintain border security to have more humane and robust legal-migration framework.”

The administration also puts some families on flights to other parts of the border:

The Biden administration has placed some families arriving to South Texas on flights to other sectors of the border, including El Paso, then returning them to Mexico from there. But there appears to be no formal determination as to who is allowed into the United States and who is selected for the expulsion, sowing confusion and anguish among the families unlucky to be turned away.

It turns out Mexico does not take back some of the families:

In late January, just days into Biden’s term, Mexican authorities stopped accepting some families rejected by U.S. agents, primarily in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, citing a new child protection law that has limited their shelter capacity. The rule has applied mostly to families arriving with children under the age of 7, so parents with small children have rushed to that span of the border over the past two months, hoping to be quickly released into the United States.

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