Retired Border Patrol chief: ‘Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears’ By Monica Showalter
Just how lawless has the Harris-Biden administration been on the border? A recently retired Border Patrol chief from the San Diego corridor described it in detail in a House hearing, which is explosive
According to The Center Square:
Retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said he was instructed by the Biden administration to not publicize arrests of illegal border crossers identified as “Significant Interest Aliens” with ties to terrorism.
Heitke testified before a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday about how Biden-Harris “open border policies have undermined our safety and security.”
“We had an exponential increase in Significant Interest Aliens … with significant ties to terrorism,” illegally entering in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Sector, he said.
Prior to the Biden-Harris administration, the sector averaged 10 to 15 SIAs per year. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year,” he said.
“These are only the ones we caught,” meaning the number likely is higher because of the volume of gotaways, those who illegally cross the border and are not apprehended.
“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIA’s or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”
His testimony came as the greatest number of individuals on the U.S. federal terrorist watch list have been apprehended under the Biden-Harris administration of 1,856 since fiscal 2021 through August, The Center Square reported.
None of this would have happened if current federal laws enacted by Congress were enforced, he said.
That’s just the really bad ones looking to conduct a terrorist spectacular, not the garden-variety thieves, cartel members, gangsters, fraudsters, welfare chiselers, spies, saboteurs, ingrates, drug smugglers, human traffickers, infiltrators, perverts, child molesters, assassins, rapists and America-haters, just the terrorist types on missions to the heart of the Great Satan to await activation. Yet all of these unfit characters have been allowed in in great numbers, with those who encountered the Border Patrol handed “parole” by the Harris-Biden administration and allowed to move about the country, often at the expense of the taxpayers, some with work permits to replace American workers along with generous benefit packages.
The transcript on RealClearPolitics, is here. A video is below:
Heitke said they couldn’t deport them, and mysteriously enough, the number of countries which would not take them back, seemed to grow all the time, meaning, the bad elements had to either be imprisoned amid an ever-shrinking amount of jail space or else released to move about the country.
“I saw a steady decrease in countries we could send people back to.
“For the first time in my 25 years and under five different administrations, whether through neglect or on purpose, I saw a large-scale lapse in our ability to return people to their country of origin. The inability to send people home meant that most people being arrested for illegal entry would either have to be detained or released.”
No matter how dangerous they were, they were usually allowed to go.”
After that, the Border Patrol was ordered to cover up the matter, gagged, in what surely was an illegal order from the Harris-Biden administration, given the public’s right to know about the danger it was in.
At the time I was told I could not release any information on this increase in size or mention any of the arrests. The administration was trying to convince the public. There was no threat at the border.
Agents were dispatched to “process” illegal border crossers into the country instead of enforce the law (they had been smeared as bearers of “whips” against illegally crossing aliens by the Harris-Biden administration for trying) and millions of “gotaways” entered instead. When Heitke dispatched agents to go count the gotaways, they were so overwhelmed by the numbers they couldn’t count them all.
Those who did not want to be caught could simply walk in. We have no idea who and what entered our country over this time throughout 2022 and 23, I sent agents to Texas and Arizona to count gotaways. Those sectors could not even put enough agents in the field to see what they had missed. Simultaneously, in San Diego, we had an exponential increase in significant interest aliens.
… and …
“Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears,” he said.
He said the cost was so great and the planning was so absent there was alien-passing going on between California and Texas, while Eddie Haskell-like, Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to persuade the Border Patrol to keep the sick aliens so that the feds would get stuck with their medical bills:
The large numbers also had and still have a negative impact on the San Diego community. I had to release illegal aliens by the hundreds each day into communities who could not support them. To quiet the problem, two flights a week were provided from San Diego to Texas. These flights simply brought aliens that would have been released in San Diego over to Texas.
Each flight cost approximately $150,000. This was the administration’s way to try and quiet the border wide crisis. Once these flights were stopped and the releases continued, California travelers saw the true economic impact. I received calls from the governor’s office, local mayors and hospital administrators asking me if we could keep injured aliens in custody so the federal government would pay the medical bills.
He also cited the toll on Border Patrol agents themselves:
Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents are continually forgotten and neglected by the media and this administration. These agents deal with death, women and children that have been raped, abused, trafficked, bought and sold, families that have spent months in terrible conditions, sickness and despair. If you look at the dramatic rise in the number of suicides within the Border Patrol, it is directly correlated with the migrant surge.
The agents have been pushed beyond their limit and this has greatly impacted their physical and mental health.
He could have added that Mexican sewage flowing into south San Diego County’s beaches and waterways made Border Patrol agents sick, and the only reason I know this is that another Border Patrol agent told me firsthand.
All of this information adds up to a bona fide scandal.
Kamala Harris was placed in charge of the border, and somehow never got around to doing that job in any credible way, let alone visit the border except as a stopover on her way to her home in Brentwood, California.
Today, she’s running for president and claiming she was a prosecutor in “a border state,” as if that amounts to some kind of credibility that she will enforce the border.
She had her chance to really do it, and she didn’t do it. If anything, she enabled the border surge, given that detention beds suddenly went missing, countries suddenly weren’t taking their aliens back and those numbers multiplied, data about danger was kept from the American public, and thousands of terrorists were permitted to cruise on in. Now she’s yelling about racism as problems with illegals hit even small towns in Ohio.
She created this mess and the Border Patrol retired executive exposed it. This ought to be getting a lot more attention than it is, and she should be called in by the press and the House to answer some questions, too.
Not that she will. But the reality is out there now based on this testimony that the border surge was intentional. And we Americans have been placed in grave danger because of her actions, quite possibly going beyond the usual incompetence, but the political and intentional.
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