What is the Border Patrol Chief Trying to Tell Us?
A coded cry for help
By Andrew R. Arthur on March 8, 2023
When I started my first stint on Capitol Hill in 2001, information gathering required reading numerous papers, receiving a couple of briefings, and taking tens of calls from those within the executive branch, daily. Now, thanks to Twitter, even public officials can share their thoughts in real time. One of the officials is Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, and his March 3 end-of-the-week tweet gave me plenty to consider. It appears that, like a famous P.O.W., the chief is sending a coded message to the outside world.
The Tweet. Here is Chief Ortiz’s March 3, end-of-the-week roundup tweet:
There’s a lot to unpack there, and much of it bucks the administration’s — and media’s — prevailing narrative.
Apprehensions. As the chief reports, last week agents apprehended 35,528 illegal migrants. Although he does not state as much directly, those apprehensions were likely mainly at the Southwest border.
Assuming that’s become the norm, it means that Border Patrol is on track to make about 140,000 apprehensions at the Southwest border in February — which would be an increase over the 128,000-plus in January the president crowed about in his State of the Union address.
It also would suggest that the White House’s recently announced “New Border Enforcement Actions” will provide, at best, a short-lived reprieve for overwhelmed agents at the Southwest border — as I predicted on January 27.
I will wait until the February numbers come out (likely soon) before I go any further out on this limb, but Ortiz’s numbers are certainly intriguing.
https://cis.org/Arthur/What-Border-Patrol-Chief-Trying-Tell-Us
