Illegal border crossings plummet due to new US immigration policies.

The US Border Patrol  patrolling the border with Mexico. US Border Patrol. 

Illegal border crossing plummet due to new US immigration policies which force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico. Fox News/AP. In May the Border Patrol's Yuma sector had 14,000 arrests but that had fallen to 800 and stayed steady afterwards. Illegal immigrants cited the fact that they would not released in America and would have to stay in Mexico. 55,000 illegals were returned to Mexico to wait for asylum since the policy was enacted. The policy has been challenged in court but there is no indication if it will survive. 

My Comment:

Though this story was covered by the AP and appeared on Fox News and the Washington Post, this story is not getting much in the way of media coverage. This is obviously a big win for the Trump administration, so it's not surprising that it's not getting a whole lot of attention. 

I do think that it shows that the illegal immigrants were never asylum seekers in the first place. If they were, they would be willing to go through the process in Mexico for the chance to get into the United States legally. Once the chance to disappear across the border was removed, the motivation for economic migrants, which almost all of these people are, evaporated.  

Of course, activist judges and lawyers are trying to screw everything up. They will attempt to overturn this policy on whatever twisted interpretation of the constitution they can. However, there is no guarantee that they will succeed in their efforts as President Trump and the Senate has been very busy confirming judicial candidates.  

I always thought the old policy was insane. You can't trust people to just show up to a hearing, especially when they could be deported. Plus they did not face much in the way of consequences for not showing up. Closing the loophole has helped reduce the migrant wave that was overwhelming the United States. It's still a major problem but it's not a total crisis anymore. 

The problem is that border crossers are only a minority of illegal immigrants. A large number of them are either people who have overstayed their visas or crossed the border a long time ago. Stopping the flow of migrants from Central America is certainly a positive especially considering how dangerous the border crossing is, but it's not the end of the problem. 

Speaking of danger, I don't buy that Mexico is too dangerous for these migrants. Though parts of Mexico are a war zone, the entire country is not one. There are plenty of safe places in Mexico so the idea that these people are in danger isn't really accurate. It's certainly safer to be in Mexico than it is to cross the border being escorted by human traffickers.