Trump Beats Border-Crisis: Illegal Crossings Crash To Lowest Since 2013

There is a reason that you have not seen more clips of AOC et al. sobbing uncontrollably at a fenced car park, or Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer exclaiming “what about the children” in recent months.

The Left’s favorite talking point of the first half of 2019 – Trump is caging kids at the border because of his worse-than-Hitler, racist and inhumane immigration policies – has somehow evaporated in recent months…

As The Wall Street Journal reports, arrests of people crossing the southwestern border have plummeted by 75% since May, marking one of the most dramatic drops in recent history.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday that 33,510 people were arrested after illegally crossing the border in November, marking the sixth straight monthly decline since May, when 132,000 such apprehensions marked a 13-year high.

In fact, The Journal notes that the May-November decline is the biggest in absolute numbers and second biggest by percentage of any six-month period this century.

 

The question is why?

• Did the desperate immigrants seeking refuge in America’s welfare state suddenly figure out things are not so bad at home after all?

• Did Soros’ (alleged) caravan-creating funds suddenly dry up?

• Or did President Trump’s immigration policy changes – ‘building the wall’, increasing spending on border security, and negotiating (tariff threats) with Mexico on immigrant flows – actually work?

The answer is simple…

“This is a direct result due to this president’s strategies to address the historic flood of Central Americans, families, illegally crossing the border,” acting CBP Comissioner Mark Morgan said at a press conference Monday.

“The network of initiatives have worked and continues to work.”

The program, often called Remain in Mexico, is one of the biggest contributors to the decline of border arrests, immigration experts say. It has deterred some people from coming into the U.S., due to knowledge that they are likely to be stranded in Mexico for months while their cases are decided.

“I think the big factor has been the Trump administration policies,” said Randy Capps, director of research of U.S. programs at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Just as notably, Capps points out that other factors that often alter migration flows, including crime rates and unemployment in the migrants’ home countries, haven’t dramatically changed in recent months.

In Tucson, Ariz., a migrant shelter has seen arrivals drop from more than 100 a day last year to fewer than 40 recently, according to its operator, Teresa Cavendish.

In McAllen, Texas, a recently opened shelter intended for migrants had so many empty beds last month that it began to serve other members of the community.

The López Obrador government has pledged that the security efforts will be permanent.

Mission accomplished? Too soon?