Border Patrol Turns Back 80% of Illegal Aliens in April Within Two Hours

A great majority of illegal aliens who crossed the southern border in the month of April were turned back by Customs and Border Patrol within a prompt time frame of two hours, according to DHS data cited by Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli spoke on KTAR News 92.3 FM’s “Arizona’s Morning News” on Friday of the no-nonsense approach adopted by Border Patrol during the midst of the coronavirus crisis.

Just look at April — 80% of the people [Customs and Border Protection] apprehended at the border were returned back over the border in an average of under two hours. That’s astonishing.

Immigration law enforcement agencies such as CBP are able to expel illegal aliens from the country on the basis of President Donald Trump’s emergency order closing off the nation’s borders to all non-essential traffic. Title 42 of the U.S. code allows authorities to bypass the byzantine and diluted immigration court system during times of national quarantine, enabling the agencies on the ground to return illegal border crossers from where they came swiftly.

Border crossings have declined significantly during the global pandemic, which is increasingly spreading in Mexico after the country seemed to avoid the initial global blunt of the disease. DHS officials such as Cuccinelli are pointing out the dangers that potential coronavirus-infected border crossers could pose to both the public and to individuals detained within the immigration detention system.

CBP has logged a mere 16,789 enforcement actions during April 2020, whereas in April 2019 the agency conducted 109,000. While the buffed border security system isn’t the only factor driving down what was a steady flow of illegal entry across the southern border, federal authorities should consider the possibility of utilizing a similar approach when levels of illegal immigration begin to rise again.

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