An estimated 55,000 illegal migrants entered this country from Mexico without being apprehended each month during the just-ended Fiscal Year 2022. Most of these “got-aways” are assumed to have taken measures to deliberately evade arrest, because these days migrants claiming to be “asylum seekers” are routinely admitted after only some cursory processing. Their reasons for avoiding capture generally involve crimes they have committed, plan to commit, or both.
So, once on American soil, what’s the next step for the got-aways?
Generally, that step involves disappearing into America’s heartland. And the quickest way of doing that is to fly. Thus has been created a new industry for the people smugglers: air transport of the sufficiently well-heeled from the border to Anytown, USA.
A Fox News report dated October 3 describes how it works. Got-aways–i.e., those who have crossed the border without arrest–are driven to small airports near the border, such as the Mid Valley Airport in Weslaco, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande. Mid Valley is too small to service regular commercial air traffic, but that’s why it and other airports like it are chosen. Small means no TSA agents. The only planes flying into and out of Mid Valley are private aircraft, which can be chartered for a price. Charter pilots are legally required to match each passenger with a name on a manifest, but not to confirm the passenger’s citizenship. The charters then fly the illegals to a city away from the border, most often Houston. From there, they again are flown out, this time to Anytown.
Fox News reports that over the past 30 days three such smuggling attempts have been uncovered by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). On Sunday, October 2, the DPS arrested six illegals and one female U.S. citizen at Mid Valley. One of the illegals was a deported felon from Mexico wanted by the state of Wisconsin for child sexual assault. Two other flights of illegals were disrupted by the DPS earlier: one on August 31 involving 13 illegals and another on September 23, involving 19. One of those arrested in the August incident reportedly told officials he had paid a total of $11,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.: $7,000 for the basic service and an additional $4,000 for the airborne option.
Notice that federal officials are missing in action in all this. They’re too busy processing the migrants who don’t mind getting caught. The more affluent–and probably the more dangerous–criminals go first class, by air.
For more, see Fox News.