December 1, 2023
It’s not just a bunch of Spanish-speakers climbing The Trump Wall to enter the US; on average, the Border Patrol captures one Iranian trying to sneak into the US across the southern border almost every day.
The latest figures show the Border Patrol arrested 659 illegal border crossers from Iran on the southern border in the last two fiscal years, from Oct. 1, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2023.
This is a recent phenomenon. In the decade from 2009 to 2019, only 197 Iranians were arrested at the southern border—fewer than 20 a year, a mere trickle compared to the rate of almost one a day the last two years.
With all the publicity the southern border has gotten, more and more people who aren’t from south of the border are trying to sneak into the US by the underbelly.
The Iranian figure is not that high not when you see that 15,594 Mauritanians were caught trying to sneak across the southern border in those two years. And Mauritania has a population of only 4.6 million, a mere 5 percent the population of Iran.
The winners (or losers) in the cross-border sweepstakes are the Turks. A whopping 30,830 Turks were nabbed trying to cross the southern border those two years. Turkiye’s population is about the same as Iran’s, 85 million.
These counts only include people arrested in between legal border entry points people who try to walk or swim across the border. That number of Iranians arrested does not include the fellow shown in the picture accompanying this article. He tried to sneak by guards at a legal border crossing.
The US Department of Homeland Security records the nationality of those arrested trying to sneak into the US. But they devote most of their attention to people coming from countries considered to foster terrorism like Iran, just to pick a random example. People from those countries are called “special interest aliens.”
The Border Patrol recognizes that most people from such countries are just trying to find better lives by getting into the US. But it is concerned that some from those countries are trying to sneak into the US for nefarious purposes like maybe assassinating US officials or planting bombs or killing dissidents from their own countries.
In the last two years, the US Border Patrol has picked up 70,000 migrants from countries considered unfriendly, like Iran, North Korea and Russia. That large number makes it a major challenge to sift the threatening folks from those who are only seeking a better life or who may have a legal right to asylum because they are escaping from a murderous regime.
