While the federal government may have people worried that there is almost nothing that can be done to stop the flow of illegal-immigrant children crossing the border, newly released figures from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency seem to suggest otherwise. The more than 52,000 kids who illegally crossed America’s southwestern border in Fiscal Year 2014 through June 15 represent a 99 percent increase over the number of unaccompanied alien children crossing during the same period last year, and the Rio Grande Valley sector alone has seen an increase of nearly 180 percent.
But the Tucson, Ariz., sector has seen 4 percent fewer kids illegally crossing this fiscal year compared with last. That might be because Tucson has more Border Patrol agents working in its sector than any other sector on the southern border, leading the next closest station by more than 1,000 agents. (The staffing comparison is as of FY 2013, but according to the Tucson Sector’s website, there are currently even more agents, 4,200 in total, working on the sector.)
And Tucson’s drop is startling when considering the record high number of children crossing from Central America. The number of illegal-immigrant children from Honduras who have entered the country thus far in Fiscal Year 2014 includes 2,324 more kids than came during the previous five fiscal years combined. In those five fiscal years, Honduras produced an average of approximately 2,541 illegal-immigrant children per year, and fewer than 1,000 kids came to the U.S. during two of those years; more than 15,000 have arrived this year.
While the number of illegal-immigrant children crossing in the Tucson sector has dropped, the federal government has decided to ship illegal-immigrant children there anyway. The feds transported nearly 1,000 illegal-immigrant kids to Tucson and Phoenix during the first week of June alone, according to CNN.