Even reduced illegal border crossing numbers are astounding

Robert Pratt

Breitbart Texas reports that new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows border apprehensions dropped in February to the lowest point in more than five years and declined for the second straight month. Breitbart points out that “These numbers cover the first full month since President Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20.”

That’s all and good but let’s step back and take a sober view of the numbers.

According to the story, “A total of 23,589 illegal immigrants were apprehended in February by Border Patrol agents between the ports of entry… the numbers represent a decline of 18,915 from January and 14,727 from February 2016.”

Also, “The apprehension of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) dropped by nearly 60 percent to 1,922 while Family Unit Alien (FMUA) apprehensions dropped by two-thirds to 3,124,” Breitbart reported.

The big declines are a positive step but ask yourself this. If you’d only heard that 23,589 illegal aliens were caught, never mind the huge number not caught, wouldn’t you think that to be an astounding number?

I think most would consider the apprehension of almost two thousand unaccompanied children as a crisis of great import and yet, this is the much smaller number after a decline of about sixty percent.

The point is, don’t trust the manipulative media and government agencies when they report massive statistical declines as a reason move on from the border issue. The numbers that get reported as a “trickle” or “massive decline” are still astounding, crisis level numbers. And those numbers just cover those caught.