I entered duty with the U.S. Border Patrol in 1995, back when there were only 5,000 people (Agents and support personnel) in all of the USBP. I was the Director of the Aircraft Maintenance Facility in Del Rio, Texas in the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector
My guys maintained Piper Super Cubs and Aerospatiale A-Star AS-350 helicopters for our cadre of pilots. Back then, the Chief Pilot and I collected daily Air Operations performance data. The pilots annotated (after flight) on their flight logs how many aerial-assisted apprehensions (APPs) they performed as well as the number of GOT AWAYs pilots counted from the air. Such as, Border Patrol Agents performing flying duties would detect and follow tracks in the desert, (called “cutting sign”) and when those tracks stopped or disappeared, such as at a paved road where a groups of illegal aliens were picked up, those tracks left in the desert were counted as GOT AWAYs.
The Chief Patrol Agent of Air Operations at El Paso collected the data from each of the ten Border Patrol Sectors’ Air Operations and published the data as “Measures of Performance” as required by the Government Accountability Office. Monthly and annual reports went to Congress, the Chief of the Border Patrol, the I&NS Commissioner, and because the Border Patrol was part of the DOJ at the time, the Attorney General.
The annual report was fairly uniform across all of Border Patrol Air Ops - -Border Patrol Pilots conducted about a million aerial-assisted apprehensions per year and counted, across all Sectors, about two million GOT AWAYs.
After 9-11, when the Department of Homeland Security was created and the Border Patrol was wrapped up with the U.S. Customs Service, I assumed the newly formed Customs and Border Patrol Air and Marine (CBP) still collected “Measures of Effectiveness” data or something similar under a new name.
When I moved to Washington, D.C., no longer with the Border Patrol, every year I heard reports from the networks or in the Washington Times reports of the number of illegal aliens in the country, and every year I would say B.S. because I had been there in Del Rio, collecting annual performance data, where the numbers of APPs and GOT AWAYs remained fairly uniform, 1 million apprehensions and 2 million GOT AWAYs, even when the Border Patrol grew to 20,000 Agents.
But noteworthy, every year the various media reported there were about 10 million illegal aliens in the country. It was an anecdotal data point that could not be researched.
When President Trump came into office, and his efforts to secure the border were put into place, I assumed the number of apprehensions and GOT AWAYs would go down. My 2018 American Thinker article, Real Walls Prevent Illegal Border Crossings discussed the different political strategies of “walls.”
And I noticed something funny; that there were still magically 10 million illegal aliens in the country. Every once in a while, someone on the news would say there were more, but never less and never citing a solid reference, like an annual “Measures of Effectiveness” report, it was a just a SWAG -- silly wild ass guess
But over the last three years, President Biden and the DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assured America that there was no crisis and the “border was secure,” even when video after video of Del Rio Sector Stations (Del Rio and Eagle Pass, specifically) were massing on the Mexican border before overrunning Border Patrol Stations with countless numbers of illegal aliens crossing the Rio Grande and entering the U.S. through removed or opened border barriers.
The Democrats and the media just engaged in military-grade propaganda.
It may be possible Trump’s policies and wall construction projects prevented millions of apprehensions and GOT AWAYs every year only to be reversed by Biden when he moved into the White House.
In my October 2023 American Thinker article, Democrats Plot to Turn Texas Blue, the Democrats are welcoming foreign invaders into the country in violation of established law for a simple reason; to change the dynamics of the next election. President Ulysses S. Grant would call their actions traitorous. (From the Grant quote: There are now two parties, traitors and patriots.)
What is happening in America reminds me of the political situation in 1917 and the Russian Revolution; there was a schism between the Bolsheviks (majority party) and Mensheviks (minority party) where the Bolsheviks eventually crushed and outlawed the Mensheviks. One party rule in Russia introduced the country to communism.
By my calculations, since 1995, the Border Patrol had probably performed as many as 25-30 million illegal alien apprehensions (where some were removed and some criminal aliens went to jail), and if you assume the number of GOT AWAYs was linear year over year, with the exception of the Trump years, there seems there may have been as many as 40 to 60 million GOT AWAYs; the actual number that are in the country isn’t known, ten million seems to be a farcical number, but however many are in the United States they are just a single signature away from getting amnesty. Meaning today’s illegal alien is tomorrow’s Democrat voter.
Even if there isn’t an immediate amnesty, many of the illegal aliens being let in will have access to illegal weapons and can form terrorist cells. Do not think illegal aliens are peaceful; that is Democrat and media propaganda. Laken Riley is just the latest abduction/rape/murder by an illegal alien. Only a moron would think her death was a unique occurrence. As long as the border is unsecured, there will be many more illegal aliens committing rapes and murders.
The full treachery of the Democrat party is now on display as some idiot Democrat members of Congress are suggesting, “let them into the military, let them become police, let them vote.” Democrats must believe they have enough illegal aliens in the country now to ensure they will always remain in power. Democrats have become the majority Bolshevik party; the neutralization of Republicans is nearly complete. They are one signature away from making it impossible for Republicans to compete in any election, and one-party communist rule will dominate.
Which means the Constitution and the Second Amendment will be shredded. The hated NRA will be abolished and Republicans will be disarmed. That’s the Democrats’ plan.
Because, if you give illegal aliens money, schools, licenses, homes, hotel rooms, cell phones, and the vote, they will vote for the criminals who let them into the country. It’s obvious when you have a critical mass of newly potential Democrat voters.
History will show that the Democrats' plan to destroy the Constitution, justice system and the military from within was on track until Donald Trump got elected. Remember Obama’s “fundamentally transforming the country,” Hillary’s missing emails, Huma Abedin’s boxes of “Muslim Outreach” documents, as well as Joe’s boxes of classified documents he “willingly retained.” Hundreds of articles were written on what Obama, Hillary, Huma, and Joe had done: sabotage, espionage, and treason, that is until the very compromised FBI running top cover for Democrats say it wasn’t.
Washington and blue state Democrats, America’s domestic enemies, are stealing America. Trump was supposed to be neutralized, but Democrats find themselves in a race to stop Trump’s second term. If he is reelected, there will be a political bloodbath. Trump will not allow domestic terrorists and criminals to run roughshod over the country.
Trump has had to learn the hard way what triggered the Democrats response and what they were truly up to. President Trump didn’t have the benefit of a war college education where he would have learned what Clausewitz observed: Politics is combat by other means. Trump is being bombarded today with every bogus charge the Democrats can muster to stop him.
The governors of Texas and Florida recognized the federal government was attacking them with military-age invaders. These deep red states are on the front lines and are doing what they can to protect their state; moving military-age illegal aliens out of those states where they can be welcomed in a blue sanctuary city and no longer a threat to Texas and Florida residents.
The Democrat’s Ministry of Propaganda, the DHS-media complex, is trying to leverage every psychological operational trick in the book to influence the narrative: there is no invasion, the border is secure, and there are only a few million “climate refugees” in the country. The liberal media has been disingenuous and hysterical; Fox News and the alternate media are reporting relentlessly, with live video from the border, essentially reverse engineering Democrat propaganda.
Are Americans waking up to the fact that Washington Democrats are domestic terrorists who have not only lied to them on what is happening at the border but that there was another purpose to Biden opening the border to invaders? Destroy the Republican Party, create one party rule, and welcome a communist government.