Deroy Murdock: Under Biden, our southern border has become a crime scene

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President Joe Biden’s "come one, come all," promises and policies have turned the U.S.-Mexico border into a humanitarian catastrophe, a public-health calamity, and a national-security crisis.

Biden also has transformed America’s southern frontier into a gigantic crime scene.

The border criminals include every illegal alien who invades America without permission. They undermine U.S. sovereignty, fleece beleaguered American taxpayers, and mock millions of immigrants who arrive legally.

Foreigners who breach the border without passports violate ​8 U.S. Code § 1325(a) — Improper entry by alien.

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Border Patrol encounters with such illegal immigrants soared from 36,687 in February 2020 to 100,441 in February 2021 — up 173 percent. The analogous figures for March 2020 were 34,460 and, according to strictly preliminary data, 171,700 for March 2021 — up 71 percent since last month and 398 percent, year on year.

Even more nefarious are apprehensions of aliens with criminal convictions. President Donald J. Trump slashed these from 4,269 in FY 2019 to 2,438 in FY 2020 — down 42.9 percent. Customs and Border Protection reports that, for FY 2021 to date (October 1, 2020 through last February 28) that number swelled to 4,140 — up 69.8 percent.

"Here we are, not even halfway through FY 2021, and a year’s worth of criminal aliens [compared to FY 2019] already have been encountered by the Border Patrol," Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies with the Center for Immigration Studies, tells me. "That’s alarming, and suggests that the criminal aliens feel empowered by Biden’s welcome-wagon policies."

These criminals have ugly rap sheets.

In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley Sector, "a Salvadoran man with a prior conviction for murder was discovered," CBP’s Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings revealed March 27 via Twitter. For FY 2021 to date, "RGV agents have arrested over 861 criminal aliens, to include 63 gang members and 92 sex offenders."

Even scarier than these specific arrests are the border-wide convictions for other illegals captured this fiscal year:

•Homicide - three

•Illegal weapons possession and trafficking - 140

•Sexual offenses - 210

•Burglary, robbery, larceny, theft, and fraud - 308

•Assault, battery, and domestic violence - 484

•Driving under the influence - 715

•Illegal drug possession and trafficking – 816

Convictions across these seven categories totaled 1,672 in FY 2019. Trump cut them to 1,309 in FY 2020 — down 21.7 percent. FY 2021 to date: 2,676 — up 104.4 percent.

Others got away.

Even more menacing, Axios reported on March 16 that three Yemenis and a Serb on the FBI’s Terrorism Watch List have been nabbed at the border since October.

(Courtesy: U.S. Customs & Border Protection)

Then, on Monday, a CBP press release datelined "CALEXICO, Calif." announced that the Border Patrol caught two Yemeni men on the southern frontier. Both were on the FBI’s Terrorism Watch List and the No-Fly List. In one of these cases, the news release states, "agents found a cellular phone sim card hidden underneath the insole of his shoe."

Oddly enough, this April 5 CBP press release vanished from the agency’s website. At this writing, this communiqué’s URL yields a page that brusquely declares: "Access denied."

This smells like yet another example of Team Biden covering up evidence of their totally destructive policies on the border. (Biden’s enforcers asked senators who visited federal facilities last week to delete photos they snapped of unaccompanied minors who were about as socially distanced as canned anchovies.) Thankfully, the priceless Wayback Machine/Internet Archive captured this document before it tumbled down an Orwellian memory hole. 

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Here is a link to CBP’s deleted, and now resurrected, press release. The agency did not respond to requests for comment.

Aside from these Yemenis and this Serb, how many others on the Terrorism Watch List have slipped through amid Biden’s border bedlam?

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Meanwhile, Biden’s human-trafficking bonanza is huge business for seriously bad guys.

"We just come here to earn our daily bread, like everyone else," a smuggler who calls himself "Lily" told Univision on March 26. Standing in the shallow Rio Grande, beside the small boat that he uses to ferry illegals across the river from Mexico to America, "Lily" adds, "In all honesty, there are way too many people. Believe me. With the benefits your new president is now granting, people found the courage to come."

And how much "bread" do these traffickers collect per alien escorted? CBP figures suggest that 100,441 illegals typically paid some $4,096 each to surge the border in February. This averages $14.7 million per day, $411.5 million that month, or a cool $5.365 billion per year. This illicit sum exceeds the 2020 sales revenues of Hyatt Hotels ($5.02 billion), Western Union ($5.29 billion), and Harley Davidson ($5.36 billion). Traffickers likely pay no taxes.

"It’s so lucrative that the smugglers will not easily be deterred from doing this business," immigration scholar Jessica Vaughan worries. "More and more will want to get into the act, bringing people from all over the world; and the more money they make, the more money they will have — to bribe officials, hire and pay more employees, and acquire weapons, vehicles, and technology to evade law enforcement."

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If those who seek better lives in America visited U.S. embassies, acquired visas, and landed at American airports, most of this chaos and mayhem would go unperpetrated. Instead, this new administration has engineered the conditions under which international hoodlums prey on, profit from, and even kill other human beings.

In just more than two months, a "nice guy" named Joe Biden has distinguished himself as the trans-border criminal’s best friend.

Bucknell University student Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.

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