According to a recent report, the Texas border crisis is shifting to California and Arizona as illegal immigrants seek alternative routes to cross the border. This trend comes as a result of Texas decisive efforts to strengthen border security, Operation Lone Star, and the help from several Republican-led states, including Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and others, that decided to send their own troops and help Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Record high number of crossings
Data shows that illegal crossings have broken the monthly record on two occasions in less than a year and a half. According to official data, the Border Patrol tallied 249,785 arrests on the Mexican border in December last year, up 31% from 191,112 in November and up 13% from 222,018 in December 2022, the previous all-time high. A growing number of illegal immigrants are now looking for alternatives, mostly in Arizona and California, to cross the border.
Illegal immigration is becoming a growing issue nationally
Last Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump visited the Texas border in two different locations. Their visits seem to be a political move before Super Tuesday, as illegal immigration is becoming a national concern even in states that are not directly impacted by the immigrants. In recent weeks, this topic has become the top focus for presidential candidates in their campaigns.
The border crisis in California
“Over the past few months, we’ve seen 100,000 migrants come across the San Diego border,” said Bill Wells, the Mayor of El Cajon, California. “A lot of those have been absorbed by this county shelter that used taxpayer money. They asked for $3 million and they spent over $6 million and now they say they’re out of money. So we’re going to see migrants congregating in our streets,” he added.
This late February statement came while announcing the closure of a San Diego migrant center because the center was running out of money and was not able to handle the influx of migrants. These asylum-seekers, who have illegally crossed into the country, are already becoming a “serious problem” for the local community.
The center, located in Chula Vista, had been taking in those crossing over the San Diego border, which in the last five months has totaled over 100,000.
San Diego hospitals with third highest number of treatments in February
In February, a hospital in San Diego saw an all-time high in injured migrants, as more and more people get hurt trying to illegally get into the United States. This issue got a lot of attention last weekend when 10 migrants got injured falling from the high border wall near Border Field State Park, a common path for those entering without documentation. The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department had to deal with this big emergency by sending out six ambulances to take the injured to nearby hospitals, with some of them having broken bones.
This event is part of a larger pattern that hospitals like UC San Diego Health and Scripps Mercy Hospital are seeing – an increase in injuries among migrants trying to climb over the 30-foot walls that divide the U.S. from Mexico. Scripps Hospital in particular saw a significant rise in these cases, with 41 migrants treated in February alone. Comparatively, the number of migrants treated for injuries in February of each year since 2016 has been only seven.
The highest spike in years
The 41 injuries related to trauma in one month are the third highest in the last eight years, with only September 2022 having 55 and November 2021 having 44, during President Joe Biden’s time. The yearly number of injuries from the border wall went up from 34 in 2020 to 239 in 2022, then went down to 189 in 2023, Scripps reports. Since the start of this year, 65 injuries have been dealt with.
Illegal immigration numbers have been going up in last three years
There’s been an increase in illegal immigration to California over the past three years. The numbers grew from about 260,000 in the 2021 fiscal year to 362,000 and then to 450,000 in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, based on data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This fiscal year, in just four months, the numbers already surpassed 203,000, with January showing around an 11,000 decrease from December, marking the first drop in a while.
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Since the border wall was made taller to 30 feet in 2019, the UC San Diego Health trauma center has seen a tenfold increase in migrants with serious injuries, a neurosurgery resident there said. The number of spinal fractures among migrants was 12 from 2016 to 2020, but after the wall went from being 6 or 17 feet tall to 30 feet, the instances rose to over 100.
