Illegal immigration Update
Bottom Line: The headlines come and go but the problem of illegal immigration persists. While DHS has indicated we’ll have 400 new miles of border wall constructed by the end of 2020, we have the full picture of what happened with illegal immigration in 2019. In short, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants accessing our country including those who were released into communities by federal officials. Let’s start here... According to the Customs and Border Protection agency report just over 851,500 new illegal immigrants were successful in entering this country from Mexico/across our southern border. For perspective, that’s larger than the population of four states – North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. That's a big deal any way you slice it. Clearly the need for better security at our southern border is needed. But that’s not the only story here...
You might recall early last year – we uncovered a plan to relocate illegal immigrants into Broward and Palm Beach Counties. By catching wind and creating awareness with state officials immediately, we were able to stop the plan when Governor DeSantis directly appealed to President Trump not to allow it to happen. But it did happen elsewhere. Of those greater than 850k new illegal immigrants, 44% happened through that type of program to “catch and release” in communities in other states. That’s compared to just over 267,000 illegal immigrants who were deported last year. So, in a nutshell, more illegal immigrants were “caught and released” in the US than were deported outside of this country.
Despite the Trump administration’s effort to specifically address these issues – including the Department of Justice recently suing “sanctuary states” - California and New Jersey – along with a local government in Washington...we still generally lost the border battle last year. Policy implemented during the course of the year by the Mexican government, in which they’re more proactive in cracking down on caravans, has the potential to help this year(the fourth quarter showed significant improvement)but it’s clear the illegal immigration crisis is real and the need to continue to “build the wall” is real.