Politics

The chilling numbers that reveal the scale of Joe Biden’s border disaster

Democrats are napping peacefully through the US-Mexico “border” crisis they engineered. Perhaps these data will snap them from their slumber:

The US Department of Homeland Security reports that the Mexican cartels’ income from smuggling illegal migrants into America has soared from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion this year — up 2,500%. If these criminals merged into a corporation, their 2022 gross revenues would rival that of — are you sitting down? — Fox Corporation. Fox News Channel’s parent company earned $12.91 billion in the year ended June 30, 2021, and $13.97 billion 12 months later.

This fact might awaken Sleepy Joe Biden and the lazy Left: Mexico’s human-trafficking cartels are now as big as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

If Democrats still are dozing through the havoc of their no-border strategy, these figures might rouse them:

  • Border Patrol agents apprehended 951,568 illegal immigrants during President Donald Trump’s final 19 months in office. In President Biden’s first 19 months, Border Patrol encountered a staggering 3,588,877 illegals — up a sickening 377%.
Biden was recently called out by a New York mayor for secretly flying dozens of migrant kids to Orange County Airport. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
  • In Fiscal Year 2020, the last fully under Trump’s control, 69,000 illegal migrants were detected on the “border” but got away into America’s interior. FY 2021 (four months of Trump, eight of Biden) witnessed 389,155 gotaways — up 464%. In FY 2022 (all Biden’s watch), gotaways hit 599,000 — up 54% versus FY 2021 and 768% compared to FY 2020.  

  • At least 266,000 unaccompanied migrant children/minors have been encountered at the southern border since President Biden took office, per CBP data,” Fox News Channel’s priceless southern-frontier correspondent Bill Melugin explained via Twitter on September 26. “That’s enough to fill up approximately three Rose Bowls.”
  • Fourteen House Republicans wrote Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sept. 23 to complain that “between October 2021 and July 2022, more than 130,000 Venezuelan nationals were encountered after entering the United States illegally.” The Marxist Nicolás Maduro regime, they added, “is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States.”
  • Twelve US senators contacted the US Marshals Service about crooks cascading across the “border.” According to their August 30 letter, “So far in FY22, CBP has apprehended over 9,000 criminal immigrants, including 53 for homicide or manslaughter, 283 for sex crimes and almost 900 for assault, battery and domestic violence.”
  • During Trump’s FYs 2017 through 2020, 11 terrorists on the watch list were captured at the border — two, six, zero and three, in those respective years.
Asylum-seeking migrants walk next to the border wall. Go Nakamura/New York Post

Under Biden, Border Patrol apprehended 15 in FY 2021 and a terrifying 78 in FY 2022, through August 31; September’s figures will follow. How many terrorists got away? Who knows?

  • According to data from the UN’s Missing Migrants Project, during Trump’s final 20 months in office, 712 illegal immigrants died on or near the US-Mexico border. For Biden’s first 20 months, that number is 862 — up 21%.

These fatalities range from drownings in the Rio Grande to the barbaric demise of 53 illegal migrants whose four smugglers let them roast to death inside an abandoned truck. Officials discovered this carnage on June 27 in San Antonio, Texas. That day’s high: 97º Fahrenheit.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro attends a press conference after his meeting with Turkey’s President in Ankara on June 8. ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images
  • Fentanyl killed some 71,000 Americans in 2021, up 23% versus 2020. For those aged 18 to 45, fentanyl leads COVID-19, car wrecks, suicides and every other cause of death.

It’s tragic enough when witting users fatally overdose on cocaine, heroin or other fentanyl-laced contraband. Sadder still are those innocently poisoned via counterfeit, toxin-tainted “Adderall,” “Xanax” and other phony pharmaceuticals. 

Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine. Two milligrams in one pill can kill.

Under Trump, Border Patrol’s fentanyl seizures for FY 2019 and ’20 (through August 31) totaled 7,595 pounds. Under Biden’s equivalent dates in FY ’21 and ’22: 24,062 pounds — up 217%.

Mexican cartels freely traverse the “border” to transport this venom. Biden Democrats couldn’t care less.

Deroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor.