Border apprehensions of illegal aliens entering the United States in the Rio Grande Valley sector has already surpassed 2018’s year-end total, the U.S. Border Patrol says.
In the first seven months of the fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, more than 164,000 migrants have been apprehended or turned themselves in and applied for asylum in the sector, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Agents in the sector made 162,262 apprehensions in all of the fiscal 2018 year.
“The increase is the result of an ongoing surge of migrants, most of them from Central America, who are crossing the border to seek asylum,” the Texas Tribune reports. “The 2019 total for the Rio Grande Valley includes 15,310 unaccompanied minors apprehended from October through March — compared to 23,760 during the entire 2018 fiscal year — and 79,000 people who were traveling in families during the same time frame, which has already surpassed the 63,280 family members apprehended in 2018 (April figures were not immediately available).”
“The Border Patrol has reported similar increases along the entire southwest border,” the paper wrote.
Last week, former U.S. Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan, who served during the Obama administration, said the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is the worst “in the history of this country.”
Morgan, who has been defending President Trump in his efforts to stem the flow of illegal aliens into the U.S., gave a frank assessment of the situation in a Monday interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Business.
“Make no mistake, and I’ve been trying to get out here — this isn’t just a crisis, this is a crisis like we’ve never experienced in the history of this country since we started tracking numbers,” Morgan said today. “And again, we’ve had that talk and that’s because of the demographics. There’s still this very false talking point out there that — well, back in the ’90s, the numbers were higher — over a million.”
Also last week, Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said in during a congressional hearing that in his sector alone, border agents have captured people trying to enter the country illegally from more than 50 different countries, including Turkey, China, Bangladesh, Egypt and Romania. “People are traveling across hemispheres to attempt to illegally enter the U.S., using the same pathways as the Central Americans,” he told lawmakers.
“Much media attention has focused on caravans coming across from Central America,” Karisch said. “But the fact is that RGV is receiving caravan-equivalent numbers every seven days.”
Obama’s border chief Morgan blamed “broken asylum laws.”
“With the broken asylum laws and other loopholes that are there, we’re seeing 65 to 70 percent increase in family units, and because of those broken laws, we’re allowing them in. This year, we’re expected to hit a million, but we’re going to let 650,000 into the country. That’s driving this crisis, driving our resources, being overwhelmed. We have to address it,” he said.
Morgan has long supported a border barrier. In November 2016, he told a Senate committee, “Do we need more fencing? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Do we need it everywhere? No. Is it the sole answer? No.”
Morgan added that the current situation “would be like having a high-tech security system, but not having doors or windows in your house.”
