President Biden’s border mess gets worse every month. July was a blowout. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered 212,000 illegal crossers, the most since 2000. The year’s total might top 1.8 million, a record. Most media step around the issue like they would a rattlesnake. The majority of what makes national headlines comes out of Texas, where Fox News regularly shows crossers walking into the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector and surrendering. But don’t forget Arizona. We’re caught in our own nightmare.

An unfunny joke around here is that if Texas gets the give-em-ups, Arizona gets the got-a-ways. From October 2020 through mid-August, an estimated 105,000 illegal crossers have avoided capture in Border Patrol’s 262-mile Tucson sector, according to a CBP source. The estimates are compiled from camera sightings, sensor hits, agent observation and sign cutting. Got-a-ways are a worrisome group, containing more than the usual number of gang members, criminals and other undesirables.

The situation in Arizona threatens public safety. In Cochise County, manpower issues have forced Border Patrol to close three highway checkpoints. Vehicle chases are up 300% this year, says Republican Sheriff Mark Dannels. “They’re almost an everyday occurrence,” he adds. Due to safety concerns, his deputies no longer chase human smugglers except under special circumstances.

Mr. Dannels’s department operates 600 cameras that monitor trails in Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima Counties. Since Jan. 1, they’ve spotted 21,000 illegals entering the country. But the apprehension rate is only 39%.

Picking up illegals on highways is big business. The traffickers pay drivers, mostly U.S. citizens from Phoenix, $1,000 per person to get crossers away from the borderlands fast. In January, a speeding smuggler vehicle rolled over in the old mining town of Bisbee, killing two.

“When I hear this administration, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, say we’re better off than five months ago, our plan is working, I say, ‘What plan?’ ” says Mr. Dannels. “We truly have an open border right now and it is so disheartening.”

In Pima County, which includes Tucson, a smuggler wreck in June killed one and sent seven to the hospital. An early August crash on Interstate 10 north of Tucson left three of the 11 people stuffed into a Jeep Liberty dead.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway, a Democrat, argues that the high number of crossings is inflated by multiple arrests of the same people expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era initiative that allows for quick expulsion. Some cross again. Other than 911 rescues, he says, his county hasn’t been greatly affected. “Our inhospitable terrain makes it more difficult to cross here than other counties.”

But hidden cameras show a stream of young men walking mountain trails into the county. Smugglers have outfitted them in camouflage clothes and carpet booties to throw off trackers. Border Patrol officials in Nogales, which includes Santa Cruz County, report that known illegal crossings jumped 200% in May, June and July 2021 compared with the same months last year.

Nogales Border patrol says seizures of fentanyl, the lethal synthetic opioid, are up 56% in their area. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 255 Americans die every day of overdoses. Fentanyl is a key driver. More than 90% of the fentanyl on U.S. streets crosses the Mexican border, says the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In Southwest Arizona’s 115-mile Yuma Sector, the surge has led to the discovery of 18 bodies in the desert so far this year, says Republican Sheriff Leon Wilmot. He is certain more are out there. Most years, the total is fewer than 10. “The cartel owns every bit of property along the international boundary,” he says. “They coordinate everything, even controlling where people from certain countries cross.”

Smugglers charge $5,000 to $15,000 a person to cross a shallow section of the Colorado River. Border crossers come from around the world, 93 countries so far this year, says Mr. Wilmot. They fly into Mexico and bus to the border. Many aren’t destitute. They have cellphones and nice clothes. They pull wheeled suitcases as if walking through an airport. They roll up their pants and walk across the river. Border Patrol waits on the American side to process them. Mr. Wilmot says Yuma’s arrests so far this year include 17 people from special interest countries with ties to terrorism, a particular issue now with the world’s bad actors energized by the Afghanistan bugout.

Yuma has had 6,000 got-a-ways this year to go with Tucson’s 105,000. Who are these people? No one knows their names, home countries, what they’re carrying, or whether they wish Americans well or ill. They are given no background check and certainly no Covid test. But they are with us now.

It’s a mess—a national security and humanitarian nightmare. Videos of Border Patrol carrying toddlers out of the mountains are gut-wrenching. Agents are alternately demoralized and defiant. Many are angry at being treated like babysitters with badges.

Some borderland residents feel betrayed by an administration that seems to care more for those crossing the border illegally than the safety of U.S. citizens. As one southern Arizona rancher told me, “I feel hopeless.” Great nations don’t behave this way.

Mr. Banks is a writer in Tucson, Ariz.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Border Agents Encounter 200,000 Migrants in August as Crisis Drags On

Supreme Court taking aim at lawless Biden: Biden has established a clear and disturbing record to break legal boundaries imposed on him

Never-Ending Green Cards for Criminals in ‘Budget Reconciliation’ Bill: Late night proposals expose the American people to unnecessary danger

Amnesty in the Reconciliation Bill Could Cost Social Security and Medicare $1 Trillion: CBO needs to do a long-term cost estimate

DHS Chief Of Staff Resigns Amid Border Crisis, Influx Of Afghan Refugees

Juarez Cartel Boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Sentenced to 28 Years in Prison by Mexico Judge

______________________________________________________________________________________________
Del Rio Texas Mess

September 18, 2021: Scrappy Fox News teaches Biden administration's censors a lesson

A New Beachhead Opens in the Biden Border Crisis: 10,000 Haitians and Cubans mass in Del Rio, Texas, amid obvious Border Patrol stand-down orders

Ted Cruz Slams Biden For ‘Manmade’ Border Crisis As Thousands Overwhelm Del Rio

Thousands of Haitian migrants fleeing disaster and unrest seek asylum at Del Rio bridge

BLACKOUT: Biden Admin Bans Drones From Showing ‘Out of Control’ Border Bridge in Texas

Biden administration to ramp up deportation flights to Haiti, aiming to deter mass migration into Texas