While The Heritage Foundation’s border and immigration center continues to shine a light on the disastrous and unprecedented realities of the border under President Joe Biden, the corporate national media simply avoids reporting stories that could give their audience the wrong (political) idea.
Their limited coverage on illegal immigration usually puts it in a positive light or is biased against law enforcement.
With no help from most big media brands, where can Americans turn for accurate information on the worst illegal immigration wave in U.S. history?
Analysts at Heritage publish informative articles and research papers, and you are now reading Issue 33 of my weekly column, The BorderLine. (Catch up on the other 32 to get up to speed on what is happening and on which Biden administration policies got us here.)
A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, so here are recommendations on what to watch for a crash course on the illegal immigration crisis.
Three videos, each about 30 minutes, will open your eyes.
Most recent is “Weapons of Mass Migration” from The Epoch Times. Presenter Joshua Philipp visits gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border, where illegal immigrants stream in daily, and downtown San Diego, where they are soon released into the U.S.
He also goes up the food chain to Panama, where United Nations entities funded by U.S. tax dollars and supported by the Biden administration facilitate illegal immigration to our southern border.
This documentary reveals how U.S. taxpayers are funding every link in the chain that encourages economic migration from the entire world, under the pretext of asylum claims.
A second good video is “Invasion on the Southern Border,” released by the Daily Wire in January. Host Ben Shapiro looks at how Biden undid former President Donald Trump’s policies that had brought illegal entry to record lows. As the Department of Homeland Security began mass releases of aliens into purely theoretical removal proceedings, the Border Patrol became a social service and travel agency.
It used to have 30% of agents doing administration and 70% on patrol, but the ratio is now more like 90% to 10%. Shapiro’s interview with the mother of Josh Wilkerson, a teen murdered by an illegal alien from his school, brings home just one tragic cost of lax immigration enforcement.
The Daily Wire also has an episode covering the fentanyl crisis, which is directly linked to the porous southern border.
Third, there is Rep. Andy Biggs’ documentary, “Alien Invasion.” Through interviews with law enforcement, members of Congress, and private landowners, the Arizona Republican explains how Biden’s policies are directly responsibility for the border crisis.
Since the documentary was made, there have been nearly two more years of these same destructive policies.
Three Visual Aids
The Heritage Foundation recently posted this national map of preventable crimes. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it features cases like drunk driving, rape, and killings committed by aliens who should have been deported.
The map shows viewers in every state the clear link between deliberate policies set in Washington and American victims nationwide.
The second visual tracks “encounters” of illegal aliens since Biden took office. That’s the term the Department of Homeland Security uses for each time its agents catch a foreigner attempting to enter our country illegally.
The number of encounters under Biden is just shy of 10,000,000 as of May 17!
Up to 85% of them are then released, into court and processing backlogs that are in the millions. Biden’s DHS allows yet more inadmissible aliens to enter under a scandalous misuse of immigration parole. Under current U.S. leadership, the millions released or paroled face minimal chances of ever being deported, even if ordered removed by a judge or even if they have criminal convictions.
On top of the “encounters,” an estimated 2 million “gotaway” aliens have deliberately bypassed border authorities. Gotaways often carry drugs or have been deported previously for committing crimes in the U.S.
Look at this third visual, of convicted criminal alien encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol. If 1,254 aliens with actual U.S. criminal warrants or convictions for assault or domestic violence were dumb enough to surrender to the Border Patrol in 2023, just imagine how many more who had outstanding warrants or criminal convictions were among the gotaways.
Reporters Doing Their Jobs
Real reporters get out in the field. Fox News covers the border and immigration with regularity, accuracy, and investigation, and Bill Melugin is the network’s ace border reporter. His spot reports, drone footage, interviews, and Twitter feed are a gold mine of facts.
I met Ali Bradley, a reporter now with NewsNation, in September 2022 on the first of five (so far) border familiarization trips. We met her at a spot where illegal immigrants had been steadily crossing at the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Bradley was in her car, where she spent hours patiently waiting for mass illegal crossings at unpredictable times. Her reporting is old school, earned the hard way.
Podcasts
One podcast I never miss is “The Megyn Kelly Show.” Her no-nonsense takes on the border are what journalism should be.
This episode from her show looks at some realities of the Mexican cartels’ inhumane and highly profitable smuggling of human beings into the U.S. Guest Charlie Kirk surveys the mayhem and suffering at the border and says: “Joe Biden and [DHS Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas want this to happen.”
I agree. Listen and make up your own mind.
On this episode of “The Rubin Report,” Dave Rubin and his guest, Ashley St. Clair, talk about the mass alien-processing centers of the Mayorkas Migration Machine. St. Clair describes seeing domestic flights full of recently released illegal aliens, boarded with no verified ID, no criminal records check, and no medical screening.
“Our border is an open border to the world,” she concludes.
Immigration policy is debatable. We’re entitled to different opinions. But Americans deserve to hear the facts. Check out the above resources, so you can make up your own mind.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Read Other BorderLine Columns:
Unprecedented Surge in Chinese Illegal Immigration Raises Security Concerns
Reason No. 3 the Left Wants Open Borders—Extortion for Amnesty
The Ways the Left Exploits Illegal Immigration for Electoral Gain
The Ideological Roots of the Open Borders Push
US Should Adopt UK’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ to Address Illegal Immigration