Border-jumping 'gotaways' spike 156% from last year

Illegal immigrants are escaping capture at more than double the pace of a year ago, according to Texas figures that show the surge of migrants being caught at the border is just a part of the problem the Biden administration is facing. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which runs its own camera system under Operation Drawbridge to track illegal entries, shows nearly 21,904 migrants who evaded capture from January through April 7, according to data shared with The Washington Times. That is up from 8,561 “gotaways,” as they are known, during the same period in 2020, which works out to a 156% increase. Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez in Val Verde County, along the Rio Grande, said that number is likely too low. “People are coming in by the droves,” he said. While most of the attention at the border right now is on unaccompanied juveniles, law enforcement officials say the more worrying aspect for border security is the people who aren’t being apprehended at the line. Law enforcement at some parts of the border report an increase in dangerous encounters with migrants who, rather than flee or give up, are willing to fight. In Texas, the Cotulla Independent School District sent a letter April 1 warning parents to be wary while their children walk home from school or play outside their homes. La Salle County, where Cotulla is located, has eight to 10 car chases a day, and many of those result in bailouts as migrants and smugglers ditch their cars and flee through neighborhoods, the school system told parents. Chases at speeds topping 100 mph have increased along the border, as have accidents involving smuggling attempts. Two mass-casualty events have occurred in the past couple of months. One smuggling crash killed 13 in California, and another killed eight in Texas. Residents across the border tell visitors that they have never before seen such a situation...One indication of the gotaways is how often migrants are trying again. The Border Patrol reported a 22% recidivism rate in March. In 2018, the recidivism rate for the entire year — meaning the same person was caught more than once in a 12-month period — was 11%. It was just 7% in 2019...Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the estimate for gotaways was 24,000 in February and 37,000 in March. Those were just the ones agents know about. He said the smugglers know agents are swamped by dealing with the families and unaccompanied juveniles. Some of the network of highway checkpoints, which used to act as a second sort of virtual border, are shut down because the agents have been redeployed to caretaking duties for the families and children. It’s part of a broader problem of the smugglers dictating the terms of the border. They send across families and children knowing it will overwhelm agents, taking them out of play as more high-risk smuggling ventures, such as drugs or migrants who don’t want to be caught, are pulled through the border elsewhere. “These are the individuals that the cartels are working very hard to evade apprehension,” Mr. Judd said. “That should be scary to anybody, that there were 61,000 in the last two months that we don’t know who they are, we don’t know where they came from, we don’t know their intentions in this country. We’re so tied up with unaccompanied children, family units, that the more dangerous ones are getting away.”...MORE