A Firsthand Look at the Arizona-Mexico Border

Summary

Earlier this week the CBP released its latest statistics on illegal migrants it “encountered” at the Southwest border. Nearly 2.2 million migrants have been caught in the first 12 full months of the Biden administration, in addition to 500,000 “got-aways”. This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy focuses on the Tucson sector of the southwest border, a 232-mile stretch that receives the third highest number of apprehensions of the nine sectors of the southwest border.

Leo Banks, a journalist in Arizona who has observed and researched border issues for decades, joins the podcast to talk about what he is seeing on the ground. Much of his conversation centers on the cartels – their wealth, fees, strategies, and their violence which is spilling over into the U.S. He describes “task saturation”, the strategy used by the cartels to occupy and distract the Border Patrol while they move their contraband across the border – both people and drugs. More than 95 percent of the fentanyl being sold in the U.S. comes across the border and most of it comes across on the southwest border.

In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and the host of Parsing Immigration Policy, draws attention to interior immigration enforcement. The Biden administration finally allowed ICE to release a congressionally required report on its enforcement operations for FY2021, but the report is missing key data that has been included in reports for at least the last decade. A close analysis of the incomplete report shows that ICE officials are arresting a lot fewer criminals, including murderers, rapists, and kidnappers.