Top immigration expert Theresa Brown, a former Customs and Border Patrol policy adviser who now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the situation at the border has “completely overwhelmed” the immigration system, according to the Washington Post.
“Yes, we are in a crisis situation at the border — a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis,” Brown said. “It’s absolutely, 100 percent true that every part of our border management system is beyond capacity and completely overwhelmed right now.”
Add to this, the CBP and other federal agencies, including Health and Human Services, which provides shelter to migrant children, have reported operating at maximum capacity, with Border Patrol agents being pulled from the field to perform administrative tasks to process the families.
These reports from federal agencies along with Brown’s survey of the situation at the border reveals that the Democrat’s rhetoric against Trump’s plans appears to be nothing more than political posturing.
To support this posturing, Democrats take a backwards look at border apprehensions being historically lows since after Obama took office. However, as officials warn, border trends are changing, especially as more families flee war and poverty in Central America.
Border activity so far in 2019 is sharply increasing upward and the trend indicates there will more border activity than has been seen in a decade. CBP has already apprehended 268,044 individuals this fiscal year, and is on pace for more than 700,000.
Speaking to the Washington Post anonymously, one senior U.S. official whose career has spanned multiple administrations said that Democrats currently lack “factual grounding.”
“I’m concerned about the lack of factual grounding in our political debate,” the official said. Democrats are “starting to not even believe data created by professionals,” the official added.
In February, Trump declared a national emergency to address the situation at the border. Democrats fiercely opposed the move, claiming no emergency exists.
In a press release issued earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security characterized circumstances at the border as having reached a “breaking point.”
