Suzy Khimm reviews the numbers:
[E]ven though the 2007 immigration bill ultimately failed, we’ve nevertheless hit nearly all of the targets that it established for increased border security—except for achieving absolute “operational control” of the border and mandatory detention of all border-crossers who’ve been apprehended. The 2007 bill sought to increase the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000; in FY 2011, we hit 21,444 agents.
Bouie adds:
[T]here isn’t much more the administration can do with regards to border security. Far from more security, what we need is for Republicans to acknowledge the degree to which the administration has dedicated itself to protecting the border and ensuring safety for towns and cities that neighbor Mexico. If Republicans are going to make immigration reform contingent on the security of the border, we won’t be able to reach a compromise if they are unwilling to judge the current state of border security in a reality-based way. And the reality is that we don’t have a border security problem.
This aspect of Obama’s first term is under-reported, because the liberals are queasy about it and the conservatives cannot psychologically handle any conservative reform – like the individual mandate or healthcare insurance exchanges or tax cuts – that Obama has endorsed and implemented. But not only has Obama more than doubled border enforcers since the middle of the Bush years, we’re still hearing from the right that we need border security before any amnesty. We have about as much border security as we need right now – and the huge burdens required of legal immigrants with high skills remain a self-defeating national scandal. Then this actual piece of reality:
Although President Obama supports setting a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, his administration deported a record 1.5 million of them in his first term. In addition, the latest data released by the government in recent days show that an unprecedented 409,849 people were deported for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
I wonder if the vast new numbers of border agents and the huge increase in deportations under Obama have ever been reported on Fox News.
(Chart from (pdf) cbp.gov)
The Dish 