While Republicans describe chaos at the border and accuse President Joe Biden of throwing open the door to the country to waves of illegal and legal migrants, many of those who live along the border in Texas say that while there has been a dramatic increase in the number of migrants caught crossing illegally, the border itself has been heavily restricted for nearly a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, reports the Washington Post. And although Customs and Border Protection is on pace to make more than 130,000 arrests and detentions in March, up from 100,000 a month ago and 34,000 a year ago, and there has been a marked increase in the number of migrant children and teenagers arriving without their parents that Biden has failed to find shelter for, for border communities in Texas and beyond, this is the beginning of a third wave of increasingly routine migration upticks in recent years. However, the federal government has taken steps to keep these influxes largely out of sight of local residents.
In Texas’s Rio Grande Valley—home to 13 international bridges for pedestrians and vehicles—traffic at the crossings is down 50 to 60 percent, representing millions in losses, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and local officials. In Hidalgo County alone, leaders say cross-border commerce represents about a third of its revenue. The same is happening at the 15 other international bridges and border crossings in the state. Local governments and their nongovernment partners work in tandem with federal law enforcement—often without the guarantee of reimbursement—to temporarily house, clothe, feed and now test for the coronavirus asylum-seeking and migrating families. Meanwhile, concerns and questions from communities in the Rio Grande Valley about destructive hurricanes, a devastating winter freeze, the toll of the pandemic and the economic constraints resulting from the closed border continue to grow as property owners wait to see if Biden will abort border wall land condemnations and restore flood levees. And as the Wall Street Journal reports a massive surge of migrants supposedly drawn by Biden’s promises of asylum, with more than 1,700 allowed into the U.S. under Migrant Protection Protocol program since February, and more than 29,000 cases pending, the challenges at the border continue to grow as residents fight to test for COVID-19 and separate those infected.
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March 17, 2021 at 06:40PM
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Are Migrants Really Overwhelming the Border? - Crime Report
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