USMC Colonel (Ret) Eric Buer: A Humanitarian and Security Crisis at The US Border

As a nation of immigrants, our greatness has come from our diversity, but with that must come caution and awareness. Immigration processes have existed long before and long after immigrants began entering the United States at Ellis Island in 1925. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 limited the number and nationality of immigrants allowed into the United States. This was one of hundreds of federal decisions aimed at deterring and controlling mass immigration. This “great experiment” or “Shining City on the Hill” must protect itself in the most fundamental ways.

“I have witnessed time and again the bravery and valor of soldiers defending a country that they consider their adopted home. They are grateful for the opportunities the United States provides…”

—General Colin Powell, United States Army

What is concerning is the unprecedented number of illegal crossings into the United States since 2021. Through executive policy and directed policing protocols, entry into our country appears to be more of a right than a privilege. Supporting that narrative, mainstream journalists have been railing against undefined social injustices and inhumane border policies. This polarizing journalism has left the public to sift through fact and fiction and truth and perception. A fact is that eleven million undocumented people, as reported by the Department of Homeland Security since 2021, have been released into the US population.

This is not a crisis of our choosing and is not a statement against immigration. This crisis has been thrust upon us by an administration pandering to domestic fantasists and aggressive social minorities. America is being overwhelmed; more accurately, our dedicated border agents and security infrastructure are being overwhelmed by unprecedented mass and illegal immigration. The serious economic, security and public safety impacts are being ignored and deemphasized outside the topic’s often emotional reporting.

From a security perspective, the threats are both real and well-documented. Whether it is the October 8, 2024, arrest of an Afghan national plotting an ISIS-inspired inauguration day massacre in Washington, D.C., Venezuelan gangs running lawlessly through western US cities, or the recent executive decision to release nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records into US cities, these examples are due to failed executive policies that arguably encouraged our borders to be overrun. How have so few failed so many? Why has our security, sovereignty, and public safety been ignored?

The level of tension and violence, seen from big cities to small college campuses, has become the new normal. Not unexpectedly, college campuses, already boiling over with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiment, have gleefully added border politics as new tinder to their social justice campfires. These movements have grown from grassroots, culturally naïve, and sometimes historically uninformed idealists to professional anti-American agitators. While domestic skirmishes are being fought on our campuses, city streets, and talk show circuits, more dangerous battles are being fought and lost in the border towns and cities forced to endure these failed policies.

“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”

—General Douglas MacArthur, United States Army

No democratic nation in the world would accept the risks that the United States has accepted. Outside of overt military action, the southern border is indisputably the easiest way to strike against the United States. In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…,” but she could have never anticipated the global exodus now pulsing through the southern gates of America.

While the number of those attempting to cross the border has steadily grown, the number of those who have successfully, albeit illegally, entered the country and subsequently been removed by immigration officials has rapidly declined. This is concerning, particularly as US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) continues to identify detained persons arriving from non-traditional countries of origin. Those non-traditional countries include peer competitors and non-peer competitor countries. The reduction in returning people is principally due to deliberate policy decisions at the executive, state, and local levels that provide “sanctuaries” for millions who have illegally entered. These policy changes are reflected in the Department of Homeland Security statistics.

The statistics, highlighted by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), report the number of illegal or undocumented aliens deported—commonly referred to as enforcement and removal operations (ERO). From 2002 to 2022, the number of personnel removed and sent back across the US borders has declined from two million in 2002 to four hundred thousand in 2022. This leaves millions, an estimated eleven million unknown and undocumented persons living somewhere in the United States.

How or why does this become a threat to national security? Both CBP and ICE have reported dramatic increases in the retention and removal of persons from Türkiye, India, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Haiti, and Colombia, along with multiple Middle Eastern countries. Notably, the demographics of those detained, denied entry, or subsequently sent back to their home countries include a growing number of single males with no family members either with them or in the US. Of the eight countries previously mentioned, nearly eighty percent of those are males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five—those statistics are alarming.

“Factors including high crime rates, violence, political repression, corruption, weak job markets, and poor living conditions remain among the primary push factors for U.S.-bound migration from Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti….”

—Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2023

Specifically, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and terrorist-inspired individuals entering undocumented are a serious security threat. All these countries have a significant number of intelligence agents deployed globally, and it would be naïve to assume that some foreign agents and terror-inspired actors have not entered the US through the southern or northern border. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is charged with monitoring both identified terrorists and foreign agents attempting to enter the US by either legal or illegal means. The FBI, with 35,000 agents, is dwarfed by the number of foreign agents from Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, and others, all looking to gain access to and operate independently within the US.

The FBI maintains the federal government’s “Terrorist Watchlist.” It is, more specifically, run by the FBI Terrorist Screening Center and includes a database of people who are known or suspected terrorists. These include individuals who have been charged, arrested, or convicted of a terror-related crime or belong to a terrorist organization. The FBI also tracks the movements of foreign agents, including those entering the US through work or student visas. In 2023, there were reported 736 detentions of individuals listed on the FBI Terrorist Watchlist at both the northern and southern borders. While the watchlist is imperfect and represents a very small percentage of those detained at the border, it is alarming.

We should not conflate the issues of undocumented immigration and espionage, but there is a correlation. China is an example of how the US border and US intelligence services can be overwhelmed. China uses the Ministry of State Security as the principal civilian intelligence, security, and secret police agency. They are responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and political security. As one of the largest intelligence services in the world, they have an estimated 125,000 personnel deployed globally. Though not directly related to the southern border crisis, Chinese students, business professionals, and government officials have recently been captured and detained while executing corporate espionage, intellectual property and technology theft, and unauthorized recording of US military training.

The threats associated with mass migration have only grown, but separating migration from immigration politics and policy has been as elusive as it has been frustrating for most Americans. While biased reporting of the crisis continues to be polarizing, there is no hiding how human suffering is easily captured in short media snippets, while specific threats to national security are less emotional and more difficult to display. Legal immigration is what has made our nation so full of talent and tolerance, but American generosity and goodwill are being taken advantage of. Our national and state leaders need to remember their oaths of office and understand where their priorities lie. The oath is to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and to faithfully execute their duties. The design of that oath, by the Founding Fathers, was to protect every American from a government that might fall victim to political whims and to provide them with a moral and ethical compass—they need to be held accountable.