Guest post by Kristinn Taylor
Chuck Todd interviewed President Obama today at the White House – watch the exclusive interview Sunday on Meet the Press.
President Barack Obama, speaking with NBC’s Chuck Todd, the new host of Meet the Press, in an excerpt of an interview to be broadcast Sunday tried to sell the impression that he has fixed the summertime border crisis of illegal alien children but that he needs to better inform the American people he has done so before he can enact executive amnesty for illegal aliens.
Obama explained he was postponing a promised ‘end of summer’ decision on ‘executive action’ on granting amnesty to illegal aliens until after the November elections in part because of a ‘political shift’ brought on by the increase in unaccompanied children illegally crossing the southern border. Obama told Todd his administration has “systematically worked through the problem” of children attempting to enter the country illegally and implied that Americans who think there is a border crisis under his administration are misinformed.
What Obama chose not to tell Todd and the American people was that the number of illegal alien families caught entering the United States has skyrocketed 412% this past fiscal year and continued unabated in August when the hot weather usually curtails illegal border crossers. The number of unaccompanied children–mainly teenage boys—that Obama is trying to focus the public’s attention on is only up 88% by comparison and is less than half the number of illegal alien family members caught entering together as a unit.
Illegal alien ‘family units’ held this summer in a U.S. detention center for processing. Photo via the Center for Immigration Studies.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures show that from October 2013 through August 2014 66,142 ‘family units’ have been apprehended along the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico compared to 12,908 in fiscal year 2013.
A family unit is an adult with children which means at least double the number of illegal aliens entering the country when the family unit number is cited.
For example the 66,142 family units caught so far in FY 2014 means at least 132,284 illegal aliens have been caught. CBP apparently does not provide a total for individuals in the family units, therefore it is quite likely the number is much higher and could be closer to 200,000 illegal alien family members.
The Daily Caller pointed out last week that the number of family units apprehended along the southwestern border in August was 5,205. In July the number was 5,517.
The number of unaccompanied children caught in August–2,307–dropped more than fifty percent from July’s 4,332. Year on year the number of unaccompanied children rose from 35,209 in FY 2013 to 66,127 through August of FY 2014–which will end on September 30.
In sum the number of family members apprehended so far this fiscal year is at least double that of the unaccompanied children and continues to surge even as the number of children caught has subsided. Yet Obama wants the American people to believe he has fixed the border crisis, even though he says there really isn’t one, so that he can grant executive amnesty to illegal aliens without too much political blowback.
(Excerpt of Obama interview transcribed by Kristinn Taylor.)
“…but here’s the other thing Chuck and I’m being honest now about the politics of it. This problem with unaccompanied children that we saw a couple weeks ago where you had from Central America, uh, a surge of kids who were showing up at the border–got a lot of attention. And a lot of Americans started thinking, “we’ve got this immigration crisis on our hands!” Now the fact of the matter is the number of people apprehended crossing our borders has plummeted over the course of the decade. It’s far lower than it was ten years ago.
“In terms of these unaccompanied children we’ve actually systematically worked through the problem so that the surge in June dropped in July, dropped further in August. It’s now below what it was last year but that’s not the impression on people’s minds…”
While he was speaking, Obama illustrated his comments with facial expressions and hand and arm gestures like a late-night TV pitchman selling the public on the latest can’t-live-without-it product.
…”What I’m saying is that I’m going to act because it’s the right thing for the country but it’s going to be more sustainable and more effective if the public understands what the facts are on immigration, what we’ve done on unaccompanied children and why it’s necessary. And you know the truth of the matter is that the politics did shift mid-summer because of that problem. I want to spend some time even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”
