Last week, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz spoke at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in McAllen, Texas and confirmed what everyone apart from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas already seems to know: America does not have operational control of the border.
“Does DHS have operational control of our entire border,” Chairman Rep. Mark Green asked Chief Ortiz.
“No sir,” Ortiz admitted.
To hammer his point home, Chairman Green held up a definition of “operational control” as described in the U.S. code: “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics and other contraband.”
Last year, Sec. Mayorkas told Lone Star Rep. Chip Roy that America did indeed have operational control of the border —and now we know that was a blatant lie.
According to a Fox News analysis, the southern border is on track to outpace the number of terror watch-list encounters —there have already been 69 encounters this year.
“Agents stopped 16 people on the FBI’s terror watch list who crossed illegally at the southern border in February. It brings the total number of encounters for fiscal year 2023 to 69, which is on a pace to exceed the 98 encounters in the prior fiscal year,” Fox News reports.
“There were only eight terror watch-list arrests between ports of entry between fiscal years 2017 and 2020, followed by 15 encounters in 2021,” Fox continues.
The Biden Administration is blaming…you guessed it…
“Despite inheriting a dismantled immigration system and facing unprecedented migration that is affecting nations throughout the Western Hemisphere, this administration has surged resources to the border, reducing the number of encounters between ports of entry, disrupting more smuggling operations than ever before, and interdicting more drugs in the last two years than had been stopped in the five years prior,” a spokesperson said.
4.9 million migrants have crossed into the United States under Joe Biden; more than 2.3 million migrants in fiscal year 2022, alone. CBP authorities apprehended 128,877 migrants in January and another 128,913 in February.
Is this operational control?
