How many ways are there for illegal migrants to die crossing or trying to cross our border?

The list keeps growing, encouraged by policies and messaging from the Biden administration.

Three people were recently killed, and dozens hospitalized, after a smuggling boat overturned and broke apart off the San Diego coast. The Border Patrol said there has been a 92% increase in maritime apprehensions of smugglers in 2020 as compared with the previous year.

In March, 13 people died when an SUV, filled with 25 illegal immigrants and their smugglers, pulled out in front of an oncoming semi. Another SUV carrying 19 people, driven from Mexico through the same hole cut in a border fence, caught fire after entering the U.S., but no one died.

Two weeks later, eight illegal migrants in a pickup in Texas were killed when the smuggler who was driving veered into oncoming traffic and smashed into another truck. By this time, the media had lost interest and the story of eight deaths did not survive the 24-hour news cycle.

A six-month old baby was tossed from a raft into the Rio Grande by human traffickers but rescued by Border Patrol officers. In another crossing attempt, a nine-year old girl was not so lucky and drowned.

Smugglers have dropped toddlers over a 14-foot border wall and abandoned children in the desert, but, again, they were rescued by the heroes from the Border Patrol, an agency that the woke left wants to abolish. According to the ACLU, “The number of Border Patrol agents should immediately be reduced by 50%.”

As horrendous as these events are, most of Biden’s border casualties will occur on the other side of the border, out of sight of American voters, and unrecorded by American media. An immigration activist admitted, “It’s one of the most dangerous trips in the world... cartels and local criminal groups ... see migrants as commodities, so they’re victims of assault, extortion, sexual assault, kidnapping, and murder.”

The border surge caused by these immigration policies should not have been, and was not, a surprise. When you tell would-be migrants that our immigration laws will not be enforced, they will ignore the laws. When you invite people to cross our border, they will come. Biden and his allies were repeatedly warned of the consequences of his proposals.

Demographer Joseph Chamie, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, warned last year that “the migration surge is coming... with the incoming government’s proposed changes to immigration policies... .”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials alerted the incoming administration that removing Trump-era restrictions would lead to a surge of unaccompanied minors along the border. The presidents of both Mexico and Guatemala have blamed the border crisis on Biden administration policies.

At least the U.S. is no longer separating children from their parents. Actually, it is, but in a different, more dangerous, and sometimes permanent way. Some illegal entrants are being returned currently, but that doesn’t include unaccompanied children, so parents in Mexico and Central America pay traffickers to take their children on the treacherous journey to America. The parents realize, correctly, that a child in the U.S. will be their ticket for entry.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said coyotes tell families, “We’ll take the children... and once children are there, they will call their parents.”

Of course, some children will not survive the journey and will not see their parents again.

Biden’s blunders seem to be driven by ideology. The important political consideration is to be anti-Trump— “Damn the torpedoes (and border deaths), full steam ahead.”

The deadly consequences of Biden’s immigration policies were as foreseeable as they are tragic.

Oberlink is the executive director of the nonprofit group, Californians for Population Stabilization