Horowitz: No, the border crisis is not getting better

Every month, a mass of illegal aliens, including some of the world's most dangerous criminals, are pouring over our border in numbers large enough to fill up major cities. Our border is less secure and our country is less sovereign than most third-world countries. Yet you'd never know about it because the media has chosen not to cover it.

Last week, President Joe Biden said in an interview with NBC that "we've now gotten control" of the border. The media has certainly taken his cue with its blackout of any news at the border. But the reality is that the weekly and monthly apprehensions are still higher than at any point in recent history, and there is a concern that the number of criminals getting away from Border Patrol is increasing every week.

According to preliminary numbers obtained by TheBlaze, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 177,431 illegal aliens at the southern border during April, topping the roughly 172K apprehensions during March. That is higher than at any point since March 2006. Broken down by individual week, the numbers for the last week in April were over 44,400, which is higher than almost any week and slightly higher than the preceding three weeks. So, the numbers haven't even peaked yet from record levels, much less dropped to controllable levels.

What is more concerning than the number of people we apprehend is the number we don't apprehend. Every week, Border Patrol counts the number of "gotaways," but that number is a rough estimate based on footprints, cameras, and sensors. Typically, the number of gotaways is about one-fourth the number of apprehensions in a given sector. But based on the data we've obtained, it appears that those numbers are going up in some sectors. For the last week of April, the number of gotaways in the Tucson sector (5,692) actually exceeded the number of apprehensions for the first time I can remember. The numbers were also unusually high in the San Diego and Del Rio sectors.

Think about that for a moment: a monthly flow of 177K is the equivalent of over 2 million people a year. But based on the snapshot of gotaways, there are likely hundreds of thousands, if not more, who will come over undetected this year. Those are your drug smugglers, gang members, and previously deported criminals. Guess where they are headed? First, they trespass on the ranches and towns within 100 miles of the border; then they travel to every city imaginable.

Perhaps Biden feels as if they are finally getting the rush on the holding facilities under control. But in his mind, the border crisis is all about the needs of the aliens, not the security of the American people, beginning with the border towns.

The Del Rio Sector, where Don McLaughlin serves as a small-town mayor in Uvalde County, has been particularly harmed by the border crisis. "I don't know what Biden is talking about; he clearly hasn't spent time in our part of Texas," said the Uvalde mayor in an interview with TheBlaze. "Last Thursday, we had to put all our schools on lockdown because of the bailouts in the heart of the city. Illegal aliens tried to break into my own house, and we caught 14 of them down my block – all of them young men. They will steal anything they can get their hands on."

McLaughlin also noted that "almost every car we find leads to a chase and they have guns inside." "They are getting tougher, and they want to fight more," warned McLaughlin.

Due to the increase in crime, several Texas counties have declared an emergency and called upon the governor to help them deal with the financial and criminal burden. Apprehensions in the Del Rio sector are up 340% this year over the same period in fiscal year 2020. Stash house arrests are up 300%, the number of sex offenders caught this year is up 2,000%, ands the number of failure to yields leading to bailouts is up 151%. You can now get a sense of why the elites living on the East Coast have no idea what it's like to be a rancher near the border when all these criminals are coming over.

As Border Patrol Agent Chief Matthew Hudak warned in a tweet, gang members "attempt to evade arrest by exploiting the influx of migrants attempting to enter our country." So, when you see in some sectors the number of gotaways on par with the number of those apprehended, you know there are likely thousands of criminals and gang members who are not caught out of the pool of those who are apprehended.

It's become clear that Texas needs to take action on its own. Rep. Bryan Slaton has already introduced legislation (HB 2862) for Texas to complete the border wall, but the legislative leadership and the governor have refused to advance the bill forward. There is also a need to pass a bill imposing a minimum of 10 years in prison for those caught smuggling illegal aliens into the country. At present, the feds have no interest in holding the gotaways they wind up catching unless they have something like a murder conviction on their rap sheet. Local law enforcement agencies are hamstrung. If Texas made human smuggling a state crime, that would really be a deterrent against the criminal element.