No. of Recommendations: 12
Are those apprehensions the total number of people?
No. Not every single person who crosses the border without a visa is apprehended. But if there's that many apprehensions, it conclusively demonstrates that the border is not "wide open." It means that there are rules in place that prohibit unauthorized crossings, that violation of those rules results in enforcement action, and that considerable resources are being devoted to those enforcement actions.
You're making a semantic argument here, and it doesn't fly.
Hey, you're the one whose complaining that other people don't accept the semantics you choose to use to describe the border. "Wide open" is not an accurate term, and if you use it rather than a phrase that is more correct, people will push back on it. That doesn't mean those people are lying, or are gaslighting you. Your terminology is incorrect, and it's not wrong or inappropriate to point that out.
I do not think there are many - even on the left - who would disagree that we have a border system that is woefully inadequate to handle very large numbers of people who are crossing to present asylum claims. It clearly is. The border system was set up to deal mostly with single people who were trying to cross without being apprehended, and if apprehended would (generally) be prepared to accept deportation. It was not set up to process tens of thousands of entire families turning themselves into customs agents with claims of asylum. Where the far left and the far right disagree, in large part, is in what should be done. The far right would like a physical barrier so that they are physically blocked from presenting their asylum claims in person, and for those who do get through to be detained rather than released to await their court dates; the far left would like massive amounts of resources allocated to the immigration processing system so that these cases can be processed super-fast, and for them to remain undetained pending that.
Neither of those approaches is possible without Congressional action, and neither is going to happen. Congress isn't going to devote the money for either massive detention facilities or tons more immigration courts. The left thinks its unjust to put tens of thousands of people in detention for years, when many (most?) have valid asylum claims and therefore aren't in the country illegally; the right thinks its unjust to allow the many (most?) who don't have valid asylum claims to get the benefit of a few years in-country before they can be processed for deportation.
All of that is a complicated deeply flawed situation at the southern border. What it is not is "wide open."
