Immigration advocates are always on-the-spot with a prepared rebuttal to Americans who pose reasonable questions about whether a better way might be found to manage the inflow of foreign nationals. About those ten million unvetted, under-educated, low-skilled, limited English speakers---they’ll grow the economy! But if immigration were beneficial for the economy, then America with its 46 million immigrant population, and unknown millions of illegal immigrants, the economy would be booming.  Instead, little evidence exists that a higher, immigration-driven population translates to a richer economy. A country’s standard of living is determined by its per capita GDP. Slower population growth, less immigration, means a higher per capita GDP. Finally, if diversity were America’s strength, as has been repeated for decades, then the nation’s public schools attempting to educate millions of non-English speakers would be graduating budding Rhodes Scholars instead of students who can neither read nor do math at grade level.

Consider how the immigration lobby recasts crime as a social issue. Venezuelan illegal alien Jose Ibarra’s brutal murder of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley has sent pro-immigration advocates scurrying to dust off one of its well-worn, most baseless reports which claims, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that immigrants, legal and illegal, commit less crime than citizens. Their message: don’t worry about Ibarra; he’s an aberration. Kate Steinle, the young woman a Mexican national killed on a San Francisco pier in 2015---she’s old news. But the following brutalities occurred in the last few months. Nilson Granados-Trejo, 25, the Salvadoran illegal alien who shot and killed a two-year-old infant in Maryland, is another statistical improbability as advocates rigged studies would point out. Local police ignored two detainers, and abetted Granados-Trejo in his murderous rampage. In Minnesota, an illegal alien dressed in a UPS uniform, killed three adults in the presence of two young children. ICE had issued a detainer request against the suspect who also had been convicted of felony gun possession. UPS hired Alonzo Pierre Mingo as a temporary employee. Blame UPS? The mainstream media’s myth that immigrants present no greater criminal danger than the everyday citizen became a talking point in California’s senate primary race. Campaigning, U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said that enforcement advocates shouldn’t let Ibarra’s murder of Riley “shape our overall immigration policy,” inferring that the murders of innocent Americans at the hands of illegal aliens is no big deal.

Except for Steinle, the other slayings are more recent and the perpetrators, border surgers. The Daily Mail compiled a partial list complete with mug shots that detailed illegal aliens’ crimes recently committed against unsuspecting victims. The charges against the illegal aliens, some previously deported multiple times, included murder, rape, sexual assault, child sexual assault, robbery, hit-and-run, assault on police officers, armed robbery, carrying a dangerous weapon, and vehicular homicide. The victims lived in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts---a veritable coast-to-coast illegal alien crime spree.

But, Cato Institute’s Vice President for Economic and Social Policy Studies Alex Nowrasteh insists that Americans have no cause for alarm. Shortly after Steinle’s brutal murder, a crime that Nowrasteh referred to as her “alleged murder” even though multiple-times deportee and convicted felon Jose Inez Garcia Zarate was found at the scene and charged with first-degree murder---hardly the definition of “alleged.” Nowrasteh’s bias in defense of criminal illegal aliens in his slanted studies has been adopted by other immigration advocates like the New York Times. Their collective but dubious conclusion: “immigrants are less crime prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates.” But the inarguable, key point is that if Garcia Zarate, Ibarra, and dozens of other illegal aliens who murdered citizens had never been allowed into the country, the victims would still be alive, a fact that cannot be intellectually denied.

CHICAGO - Three Colombian migrants have been charged with stealing more than $20,000 from a woman in suburban Addison last week.

Prosecutors say Miguel Pena-Gomez, 43, Liliana Nagles-Cuesta, 49 and Angela Posada-Acosta, 45, scammed a woman outside the Caputo’s Fresh Market located at 510 W. Lake Street on Nov. 7.

Pena-Gomez allegedly approached a woman asking her for help claiming that he had a winning lottery ticket worth $6 million and he needed money to collect the winnings.

While he was speaking with the victim, Nagles-Cuesta went up to them and asked if they needed help and that she spoke Spanish.

Prosecutors say Nagles-Cuesta then pretended to contact lottery authorities to see how much money was necessary to collect the winnings, which she then told the victim was $30,000.

The victim told the two that she did not have $30,000. That's when Nagles-Cuesta offered to get money from her account to help. Nagles-Cuesta left saying she was going to the bank.

Pena-Gomez and the victim drove to the victim’s bank where the victim withdrew $20,143 and then drove back to Caputo’s.

Prosecutors say Nagles-Cuesta then left the victim and Pena-Gomez again and told them she was going back to her bank to withdraw more money.

A short time later, Pena-Gomez allegedly told the victim that he was not feeling well and asked her to go into the store to get him some medicine.

When the victim went into the store she left the money in the glove compartment of her car. When she returned, Pena-Gomez took the money and fled.

Prosecutors say Nagles-Cuesta never returned.

After a month in New York's overcrowded homeless shelters, two Ecuadorian migrants and their baby recently received a free plane ticket to Minneapolis.

They took a cab to a Bloomington hotel that Hennepin County leases as an overflow family shelter, where many newly arrived Ecuadorians stay. But the couple found a sign in Spanish on the door: "We are not accepting new families at this time."

The 18-year-olds sat on the curb that afternoon as their baby slept on a suitcase, waiting for a room to open in the full hotel.

One-third of the 452 families in homeless shelters run by Hennepin County are newcomers to the United States, as a surge of migrants cross the southern border. Others are being turned away as Hennepin County's system grows so overwhelmed that it is failing to follow its longstanding policy to shelter every homeless family with children. The number of sheltered families has doubled since this summer to nearly four times the county's regular capacity — the highest in at least a decade.

Homelessness among Minnesotans was already surging after the pandemic-era eviction moratorium and rental assistance ended in late 2022, prompting Hennepin County to put unhoused parents and children into overflow hotels. Then an influx of migrants started contributing to the overflow.

It remains unclear how many migrants come to Minnesota directly versus from cities away from the border, but most are Ecuadorians seeking asylum, waiting for court dates that are months or years away. Now the county is lodging more than 1,500 people in its family shelters while searching daily for new rooms.

Hennepin County is one of a handful of jurisdictions in the nation with a "shelter all" policy, though that does not extend to single adults. It budgeted $9.7 million for family shelter this year. By March, the county approved an additional $17 million to meet the exploding demand in 2023, and it expects to spend $22.5 million next year.

Illegal immigrants refuse to social distance or wear masks and can’t be kept in quarantine even if they do contract the coronavirus, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said in a report Wednesday that undercuts many of the Biden administration’s claims.

The audit said the policies established by Customs and Border Protection to handle the surge of migrant families is “not effective” because it relies on communities that don’t have the power to impose a quarantine even if an individual does test positive.

And the Biden administration is making less use of a pandemic border expulsion tool, which has led to “increased risk for CBP personnel, migrants in custody and local communities” from the virus, the inspector general said.

“Without stronger COVID-19 prevention measures in place, DHS is putting its workforce, support staff, communities and migrants at greater risk of contracting the virus,” the investigation concluded.

Investigators surveyed CBP agents and officers along the southwest border and said they received some worrying responses.

Migrants, despite being “constantly reminded” of coronavirus risks, refused to distance or wear masks.

And the surge of people meant migrants were in custody for extended periods of time in overcrowded Border Patrol stations, adding to the risks.

The report confirms many of the claims Republicans have made over the months, accusing the Biden administration of obfuscating the risks of COVID-19 from the unprecedented surge of migrants.

“While migrants crossing illegally are given a free pass, American citizens traveling internationally are required to present a negative result. The double standard is astounding,” said Rep. John Katko, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Almost lost in the distractions of the holiday weekend, on the night of December 29 up to 400 mostly Cuban migrants forced their way past Mexican immigration and over payment turnstiles on the Paso del Norte Bridge from Ciudad Juarez with a desire to force their way into downtown El Paso, Texas, according to news reporting. (Some video of the attempted incursion is here and here.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mobile Field Force officers met them in riot gear and used concrete blocks tipped by concertina wire to block the onslaught mid-bridge as many of the migrants chanted "Biden! Biden!" Many demanded they be let in to live in the United States while they pursue asylum claims, instead of waiting in Mexico as required under various policies of President Donald Trump.

But with Trump still presiding, the blocked migrants with Biden on their minds were forced to listen to a recorded message broadcast over loudspeakers in Spanish and English warning that any further trouble would be met by force, arrests, and prosecution. That went on until the crowd dispersed at about dawn on December 30.

A source told the Center for Immigration Studies that CBP and Mexican authorities on the international bridge to the Del Rio, Texas, port of entry broke up another, smaller migrant formation demanding U.S. entry. Otherwise, the extent to which the attempted incursions occurred elsewhere along the southern border remains unclear at this time. But a question naturally arises from these events.

Do attempted mass incursions like these foreshadow a new flash point and tactic whereby untold tens of thousands of migrants inside Mexico can quickly test the new Biden administration on its many campaign promises of a kinder and gentler approach toward them? It bears watching.

Broader Implications of the Mass-Incursion Tactic for Incoming President Biden

This was not the first time CBP under Donald Trump has forcefully responded to surging migrants hoping to overrun the port of entry at El Paso and will almost certainly not be the last there or elsewhere.

Especially not now, judging by the chants and media interviews on the Paso del Norte Bridge this time about Biden's many immigration promises heard widely throughout the Americas and beyond, including an amnesty bill, an end to deportations, and reversal of Trump immigration policies during his first 100 days in office. While sharp analysts like my CIS colleague Mark Krikorian judge that Biden is likely to slow-boil the frog on some of his immigration promises for pragmatic political reasons, what was said on the international bridge during the recent confrontation confirms that migrants don't necessarily pay close attention to in-the-weeds political timing so much as big, broad, and directional messages.

The migrants on that bridge showed up with high expectations that the coming Biden administration somehow had already managed to swing open the gates as promised, never mind that Trump still has a few weeks to go.

The Mexican newspaper El Sol de Parral quoted Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua State Council for Population and Migration, who was at the bridge last week, as saying a false social media rumor that the Americans would start letting migrants pass through that night easily sparked the event. He said that happened because "there is expectation, there is hope and there is enthusiasm in them [sic] who believe that with the change of administration comes new measures and that they will immediately enter and there will be new conditions that will allow them to request asylum."

Raul Pino Gonzalez of Havana was quoted at the bridge saying: "They should let us pass. We are calling out to Mexico and the U.S. and to Biden, the new U.S. president, to remind him of the presidential campaign promises he made. To make him aware we are here."

While events like this have happened before, time and place make these fresh mass-entry attempts very different. At issue with the mass-incursion tactic is whether the new administration will show similarly stiff, riot-gear resolve toward follow-on attempts, or let them pass to avoid the look of forceful confrontation.

In this Hobson's choice, the Biden administration would face the politically bitter prospect that violent confrontations would be among its first interactions with migrants. Should the administration choose the obvious alternative of letting such groups pass on the bridges or elsewhere, it would naturally follow that any successful breach would only inspire more, which could quickly spiral into a nationally hurtful border crisis, given the vast populations of frustrated, angry migrants in Mexico and far beyond at the moment.

Half of the blue-collar migrants who openly crossed the southern border between 2014 and 2019 remain in the United States, according to March 2020 data posted by the Department of Homeland Security.

Agents registered 3.5 million arrivals and sent 1.8 million back home via deportations and repatriations by March 2020, said the December 31 report. The report did not include data about the additional migrants who successfully sneaked through the border.

But 280,000 of the 3.5 million were provided “relief,” so allowing them to stay in the United States and eventually get green cards.

That means one in 12 blue-collar migrants get the colossal prize of U.S. residency and citizenship for themselves and all of their descendants — in exchange for surviving the U.S. government’s semi-formal obstacle course of cartels and coyotes, distance and bribes, judges and lawyers, deserts, walls, and border agents.

Moreover, another 1.4 million blue-collar migrants are still living in the United States, mostly while they are waiting for a final court decision, said the report, titled “Fiscal Year 2020 Enforcement Lifecycle Report.”

Many of those 1.4 million not-deported migrants take jobs from U.S. employers. The imported labor reduces the marketplace pressure on employers to compete for American workers with offers of higher wages, better working conditions, and more investment in labor-saving machinery.

Amid enthusiastic sympathy from white-collar progressives, the migrants hold down Americans’ blue-collar wages while also nudging up rents, and they crowd into the K-12 schools needed by the children of blue-collar Americans.

(Update 1-16-2020): A large portion of the caravan, comprised of an estimated 1,500 migrants, has already crossed into Guatemala and is expected to arrive in Chiapas, Mexico, later this afternoon. The number may increase if, as in the past, other migrants join as they proceed.

A Mexican newspaper reported this morning that hundreds are waiting to join the caravan with hopes of being able to enter the United States.

However, the National Institute of Migration and the Mexican National Guard have been deployed on the border with Guatemala. Eloína Sonia Hernandez Aguilar, mayor of Suchiapa, Chiapas, confirmed that "Everything is quiet so far, we are watching."

Original Article (12-30-2020): 

Mexico's Interior Secretary, Olga Sanchez Cordero, confirmed the formation of a United States-bound migrant caravan commencing in Honduras. The caravan is slated to leave the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula by mid-January.

Rumors of the caravan forming began appearing on social media last month.