For years, they came from the bottom.
Now, they’re coming from the top.
They’re also still for sure coming from the bottom as well.
The Border Patrol is begging agents to volunteer in the north after a staggering nearly-850% surge of mostly-Mexican migrants illegally crossing into the US from Canada.
The agency’s Swanton Sector in Vermont — covering parts of upstate New York and New Hampshire — requested a “quick turnaround” of agents from the already overwhelmed southern border to make their way north to volunteer for at least a month starting next week.
Help is needed to control the “strain caused by the surge” of “primarily Mexican migrants with no legal documents,” Swanton’s Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia wrote in a memo obtained this week by Fox News.
“Due to the increased numbers, stations are task saturated with processing large groups, which has contributed” to more migrants being able to slip into the country, the memo notes.
The request came a week after Garcia reported that crossings had reached “historic highs” — even as temperatures plummet to deadly lows of minus-four degrees.
Illegal crossings of the Canada/U.S. border in sub-freezing temps continued last week, as #BorderPatrol Agents apprehended 115 subjects from 12 countries—mostly Mexican nationals. Unfortunately, perilous weather has done nothing to deter this traffic. Don’t risk it! @USBPChief pic.twitter.com/Sjhhz0qJPP
— Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia (@USBPChiefSWB) February 14, 2023
His sector said that the current fiscal year — which started in October — “demonstrates an approximate 846% increase in encounters and apprehensions compared to the same period” in the previous year.
In fact, the first four months of the current fiscal year have seen more encounters than the whole of the previous two years combined.
Last month, agents recorded 367 apprehensions and encounters — more than the total of the past 12 Januarys combined, which was 344.
“Chief Garcia is a phenomenal agent … If he’s asking for help, we do know that we’ve got a problem up there,” Chris Clem, the former patrol chief for the Yuma sector in Arizona, told Fox News.
Clem said that the northern border is often forgotten because the volume at the southern border is “astronomical.”
Honestly, there’s really no point in even talking about immigration anymore.
It’s likely that more than 10 and maybe as many as 15 million people crossed in 2022. We’re already in the worst case scenario. If we’re going to send these people out, it’s not much harder to send out 200 million than it is to send out 100 million.