“Border Bandit” Story Highlights How Mass Illegal Migration Fuels Crime

A video was recently released by Yuma Sector Border Patrol officials showing a border bandit robbing illegal migrants – men, women, and children – at gunpoint as they entered the United States. The incident occurred in June, and the armed robber crossed the border back into Mexico after despoiling the migrants of their meager possessions.

According to Randy Clark, Breitbart reporter and retired 32-year United States Border Patrol veteran, “[t]he bandit situation is not a new phenomenon to the southern border.” Ever since its founding in 1924, the Border Patrol “battled for control of the border landscape to prevent bandits from committing armed robbery, rape, and murder — sometimes in broad daylight.”

In spite of this, Clark points out, “[i]n the 1980s, near San Diego, California, armed bandits roamed almost freely each night as hundreds of migrants made the trek to seek work in the booming agricultural industry in Southern California.

The Border Patrol established a border bandit task force to enter the canyons near San Ysidro, California in an effort to reduce bandit activity.” Eventually, things like building fencing, lighting, and increasing USBP personnel levels decreased border bandit activity, but “[a]s the video demonstrates, however, the problem has not been completely eradicated.”

Logically but sadly, soft-on-enforcement, equivocal (“don’t come now”) Biden-Harris policies and rhetoric are fuel for border banditry. Crime thrives and increases when there is chaos, anarchy, and permissiveness – and that is certainly what the current administration has created through its self-inflicted border crisis which is still largely refuses to fix.

It also makes logical sense, that the more illegal border crossers there are (e.g. 180,000 Southwest border “encounters” in May alone, and untold numbers who were not encountered), the more individuals there are to rob or otherwise victimize. Of course, bandits are not the only dangers the migrants face, given that they are preyed upon by such bad actors as human and drug smugglers, as well as brutal gang members (MS-13, etc.) and other criminals infiltrating the migration flows.

And let’s not forget that criminals and bandits victimizing illegal border crossers can also target American citizens living in the border zone.

Another major lesson here should be the harsh reality of illegal migration, contrary to its rosy, romanticized portrayal by the unregulated-borders crowd (the “new Ellis Island,” an “act of love,” etc.). The apologists for mass migration – both within the government and outside of it – should realize that, if they truly care about the migrants (which is doubtful), they are doing them a grave disservice and exposing them to danger by encouraging and tolerating illegal migration.