Border Agencies Cut Catch and Release to Less than 2,000 Migrants Per Month

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
File Photo: John Moore/Getty
Neil Munro

Border agencies have removed more migrants from the border region than have arrived during the last several months, the acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency told Breitbart News on Wednesday.

In January, the agency also reduced the number of caught migrants released into the United States down to roughly 2,000 migrants, acting commissioner Mark Morgan said. He continued:

The majority of those are released due to humanitarian reasons. A clear example of that is if someone comes and they’re in need of immediate medical assistance … This is where we’re really saying that that, you know, catch and release has all been ended.

In May 2019, border agencies were forced to release 80,000 migrants into the United States, as the organized wave of migrants broke down the border protection barriers, which were also being undermined by immigration lawyers, judges, as well as by Democrat and Republican legislators.

In February, roughly 30,000 migrants tried to cross the border. That number is level with January’s flow, despite an expected 30 percent increase from January to February, he said.

The huge success is made possible by President Donald Trump’s policies, which have provided the tools and the manpower needed to block the migrants, he said.

I have personally asked Congress, again and again and again to please act to pass some form of meaningful legislation that would address this crisis. We’ve told them again and again exactly what they need to do, and they have refused to act … We have acted.

However, the inflow of younger “Unaccompanied Alien Children” increased, Morgan revealed. “We’re continuing to work with that, but right now, it stays the same because of the TVPRA law … That’s one of the areas that we’ve been asking Congress to adjust.”

The “UAC” pipeline is protected by Democrat legislators because it allows illegal migrants to pay smugglers to bring their children to the border so they can be relayed by federal agencies to their parents. The informal federal partnership with the cartel-backed smugglers has been repeatedly admitted by federal officials, but Democrat legislators have repeatedly blocked federal agencies from acting against the illegal-immigrant parents.

The “Transnational Criminal Organizations” who manage the flood of migrants are changing their tactics, Morgan warned:

In the past nine months, we have taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of the TCO’s bank accounts, we have devastated them. We have all but eliminated their ability to make cash and increase their power on the backs of migrant families from the northern triangle countries. So as they saw the hundreds of millions of dollars being depleted from their bank accounts, they knew that they had to shift their tactics …  to now prey on the backs of extra continental countries [Migrants from Brazil, Ecuador, and other South American countries] and then Mexican national single adults.

Border agencies are also interdicting more drugs, partly because the expanding border wall is pressuring the smugglers to sneak their drugs through the high-tech border “Ports of Entry,” he said, adding:

In February, seizures of what I call the four major hard narcotics were up, and not just by a few percentage points. Cocaine from January to February was up 41 percent. Fentanyl up 75 percent, heroin up 11 percent and methamphetamine up 30 percent. That’s just in 30 days.

The border wall is helping border agent block more drugs, he said:

It actually helps shape the behavior and activities of not only the illegal border-crossers, but also the smugglers that are also smuggling in the drugs. If you think about that for a minute, that new border wall system helps push drug trafficking of folks from in between the ports to the ports. That’s what we want. With each mile of that wall system that goes up, we’re impeding and denying the smuggling capability to [im]port drugs in between the ports of entry in that area.

 

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