On Same Day Dems Float Open Borders, Border Patrol Proves How Dangerous That Is
During the second night of the Democratic debates last week, almost every contender on stage came out in favor of decriminalizing illegal immigration.
In fact, eight of 10 said they would make it a civil penalty instead of a criminal one. California Sen. Kamala Harris even went as far as to say she wouldn’t deport those who entered into the country illegally.
Most of the talk during the Thursday debate centered on illegal immigration from Central America. That still represents a threat, mind you — not just in terms of the potential for importing violence but also of overwhelming government services.
Beyond that, though, there remains a deeper existential threat posed by decriminalization. It’s the fact that not all of those crossing our southern border are poor migrants from Central America. In fact, some of them aren’t even from the Americas at all.
A news release put out earlier on the same day as the debate from Customs and Border Patrol received scant attention in the media.
On a normal day, it was hardly anything that would have normally warranted a second look: The agency announced that two large groups of over 100 illegal immigrants had been arrested in the Del Rio Sector of the border after crossing the Rio Grande.
“This brings the total number of large groups of over 100 people encountered in Del Rio Sector this fiscal year to three,” the news release state.
Hardly anything unusual, especially in the midst of a border crisis where large groups traveling together — “caravans” or “mini-caravans” — have become the norm.
However, it’s where the people who were in the groups were coming from that should have drawn some attention.
“On June 22, agents assigned to the Del Rio Station arrested a group of 105 people shortly after they made an illegal entry by crossing the Rio Grande River. During processing, agents determined that the group consisted of about 82 Haitians as well as a number of South American and African nationals,” the news release stated.
“On June 24, Del Rio agents arrested a group of 205 people shortly after they made an illegal entry into the United States. The group consisted of about 122 Haitian nationals, but also included nationals from South American and African countries.”
Unless a miracle straight out of the Old Testament has occurred, I don’t believe that anyone from Haiti has parted the Caribbean and caravanned over to the Yucatán Peninsula.
And if that sounds a bit too difficult, just imagine what parting the Atlantic to come over from Africa would entail.
“Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents have apprehended people from over 45 countries around the world,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz said in the news release. “Our agents, along with the assistance of our DHS partners, continue to meet each new challenge as the ongoing humanitarian crisis evolves.”
This was hardly a one-off. Late in May, CBP posted a video to Twitter of a caravan that was apparently “the first large group apprehended in the Del Rio Sector and the first large group of people from Africa — including nationals from Angola, Cameroon and Congo — apprehended on the Southwest border this year.”
The video showed the caravan travelers as they waded into the Rio Grande.
U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to Del Rio Sector apprehended a large group of 116 individuals—from Angola, Cameroon and Congo—after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande River into the U.S. on Thursday: https://t.co/5VsJsD4nPF pic.twitter.com/HWGyVtzEC6
— CBP (@CBP) May 31, 2019
That’s three large groups of individuals who aren’t from Central America in the Del Rio Sector in the space of less a month.
It’s not like people from Haiti, Angola or the Congo represent any special risk that people from Central America don’t.
Terrorists, on the other hand, do — and there are several al-Qaida affiliates in Africa alone.
You don’t even have to be from Africa to do this, mind you.
Also in June, a seized Canadian-Trinidadian Islamic State group member named Abu Henricki claimed that the terrorist group had recruited him on a mission to carry out financial attacks in the United States, according to Fox News.
He told researchers that he would have been smuggled into the country from Mexico.
If this untrue, it isn’t exactly out of the question — and if illegal immigration is decriminalized, it will be a lot easier.
Just imagine, for a moment, an America under President Kamala Harris. Just imagine a world in which those who come over the border aren’t deported but merely given a civil penalty.
If these individuals can find their way from countries like Haiti and Angola to Mexico and then to America, terrorists certainly can, too. So can other bad actors.
When eight out of 10 candidates on that stage last Thursday said that they would decriminalize illegal immigration, perhaps they should have been asked about this news release.
I don’t know if it would have changed any of their answers. It should have.
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