Illegal Immigration Booming

The Hill headlines: “Illegal immigrant numbers skyrocket at Mexican border.” The numbers are simply staggering:

The number of families and unaccompanied children apprehended on the southern border has skyrocketed this year, according to new figures from the Obama administration. …

Through the first six months of fiscal 2016, which ended on March 31, border officials apprehended 27,754 unaccompanied children, the CBP reported — a 78 percent jump from the 15,616 apprehended in 2015, and just shy of the 28,579 apprehended in 2014.

For family units, which consist of at least one child traveling with at least one adult, the increase was even more dramatic. In the first six months of 2016, 32,117 families were apprehended, the CBP reported — an increase of 131 percent from the 2015 figure (13,913) and 62 percent from the 2014 figure (19,830).

And those are just the ones who were caught. Although “caught” doesn’t seem like the right word; I am not sure that illegal immigrants arriving from the South do much to evade capture. Even as funding has increased for ICE, the number of deportations continues to drop. This simple chart is from Senator Jeff Sessions’ Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest:

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ICE’s detention and removal budget grew approximately 25 percent from FY 2012 to FY 2015, but deportations fell by around 43%. The Subcommittee adds:

This dramatic decline in deportations is the direct result of policies implemented by the Obama Administration to get around plain law passed by Congress. Indeed, the guise was to assert that the Government lacked the resources to deport more aliens. The former Director of ICE, John Morton, issued a memorandum in March of 2011, in which he outlined ICE’s purported enforcement “priorities,” and claimed that setting such priorities was necessary because ICE “only has resources to remove approximately 400,000 aliens per year, less than 4 percent of the estimated illegal alien population in the United States.” The Administration has used this line repeatedly, even citing it in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. …

Notwithstanding the Administration’s claims of limited resources, ICE’s budget for detention and removal operations has grown substantially – from $2,750,843,000 in FY2012, to $3,431,444,000 in FY2015. Moreover, just last year, the Administration shifted $113 million away from ICE’s budget for detention and removal of aliens.

The scofflaw Obama administration refuses to enforce the country’s laws. This goes a long way toward explaining why Donald Trump will probably be our next president.

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