(Bugout.news) The Obama administration plans a 50 percent cut in border surveillance along the U.S. Southwest boundary with Mexico even as the migrant surge from impoverished Central and South America worsens.
As reported by Texas Tribune, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, have sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security pressing its director, Jeh Johnson, on why the agency plans to reduce aerial surveillance along the Tex-Mex border.
In the letter the pair noted that DHS’ planned cut to a requested 3,850 hours of aerial detection and monitoring this year was 50 percent less coverage than in recent years, and at a time when an increased number of migrants are flooding the border.
“Given the recent surge of migrants from Central America and Cuba along the southern border, we believe DHS should request more surveillance and security resources, not fewer,” they wrote.
Abbott and Cuellar also reminded Johnson that in September the governor’s office requested more aerial reconnaissance resources and U.S. Border Patrol agents but the request was ignored.
A spokesperson for DHS told the Texas Tribune that someone would respond “directly” to the governor and the lawmaker.
As the Tribune reported further:
[The] request comes as CBP is reporting a new surge in the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. From October to December of 2015, about 10,560 unaccompanied minors entered Texas illegally through the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. That marks a 115 percent increase over the same time frame in 2014. The amount of family units, defined as at least one child and adult guardian or parent, has increased by 170 percent to 14,336 in the Rio Grande Valley.
In addition other sectors along the Texas-Mexico border have seen dramatic increases in migrant traffic.
Abbott noted in his letter than a significant number of Cuban migrants were also streaming towards and across the border.
Critics of the Obama administration say this is part of the president’s overall plan to create more chaos in the country, and they may be right; given Obama’s previous executive actions on immigrant, essentially delaying deportation (which has been found unconstitutional by lower federal courts) and this very conscious decision to cut border security, obviously the administration is attempting to do more than just bolster Democratic voter rolls.
What makes a story like this important to Americans who don’t live in Texas or a different border state is that migrants don’t stay in those border states – the “migrate” north and, with the administration’s help, are resettled in various communities around the country.
Given the very dire economic status of the country and the world, there is every reason to believe that at some point these migrants – who aren’t planning to assimilate and won’t be forced to do so – will become much more of a liability than simply being a drain on the welfare system.
Look for Obama to do what he can during his final months in office to 1) further destabilize the economy; and 2) weaken border security.
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