Border Official: Illegal Family Migration Has Increased 600% This Year

Say what you will about the Trump administration’s short-lived policy of “zero-tolerance” at the border – a policy that came to be known as “family separations” by the left – it was working. It was quickly reducing the number of family units willing to cross the border, because they knew coming across with a child was not a guaranteed way to get what amounts to immunity from detention. Many families still pushed their luck, of course, but we believe it would have only been a matter of time before word trickled out: Don’t try it. It isn’t going to work.

But thanks to the Democrats and their PR pushback, Trump had to abandon that policy and return to the feckless catch-and-release program of his predecessors. Now, with uncertainty hanging above the future of the border, more family units than ever before are trying to get into the United States before Trump closes the door permanently. That is at the center of our current crisis, and El Paso Border Patrol chief Aaron Hull says it’s completely unsustainable.

In an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo this weekend, Hull said, “We’re seeing an unprecedented number of people crossing the border illegally as family units.” Hull said there had been a 600% increase in illegal arrivals since the beginning of the fiscal year as compared to this time last year.

“Agents join the Patrol to secure the border, to enforce the law, but increasingly they’re being tasked with things that they never thought they would be doing — heating up baby bottles, literally changing diapers, caring for more and more sick people, because a lot of these aliens coming in are carrying contagious health conditions, things like chicken pox, scabies, tuberculosis, lice,” Hull said.

It’s funny, isn’t it? The media is busy sending all of us into a panic over the measles outbreak, playing up the anti-vaccine side of the story. Now we have our own thoughts about that whole deal, but it’s interesting that while that’s going on, the same media completely ignores the dangerous contagious illnesses being brought to our country by migrants from Central America. Which makes you wonder: If measles was effectively eradicated in this country, how did an outbreak start? Out of thin air? No, probably not. And that’s not even getting into the rest of the messy, dirty diseases that’s coming out of these caravans.

It’s beyond time for Congress to step up and see this for the crisis it is. Not only is this a crisis for the country economically, it could easily turn into a public health catastrophe. We need action, and we need it now.