Migrants Attempt to Board Two School Buses Near California Border

On August 28, the Fox affiliate in San Diego reported that there had been two incidents in preceding days in which migrants attempted to board Jamul-Dulzura Union School District buses near the border in California. Given the free ride migrants have been given under the current administration, the offenders in question were likely just confused, and probably thought that such transit was simply one more perk of coming here illegally.

“Migrants Attempt to Board School Buses in East County”. The Fox report begins:

Two school bus routes within the Jamul-Dulzura Union School District have been briefly interrupted over the last two days after migrants attempted to board them, according to district officials.

In an emailed notice to families obtained by FOX 5/KUSI, Superintendent Liz Bystedt said a group of migrants attempted to board along the district’s A and B school bus routes.

The first incident occurred along the Route A route near the intersection of Highway 94 and Cochera Via Tuesday afternoon. According to Bystedt, a group of three men were walking in the middle of the highway trying to stop one of the buses, prompting it to “go around” the group.

A Route B school bus Wednesday morning came upon a group of about 20 people as it was picking students up from the same stop, Bystedt said. Parents present at the site helped the bus driver ensure students were safe and that no one boarded the bus.

Thanks to Google maps, I can tell you two things.

First, its name notwithstanding, “Highway 94” is just a two-lane divided road in the middle of an isolated piece of California real estate. There’s a rusting Quonset hut on one side of the road, and what appears to be the crumbling remains of an abandoned dwelling on the other.

I’d likely stay with my kid until the bus arrived if I were a local parent, and a nearby emergency call box is probably sited there for a reason.

The second thing is that this stop, officially in the “town” of Potrero, sits about a mile north of the U.S.-Mexico border, northeast of the Mexican town of Tecate and almost due north of a location on the southside called “Rancho El Mongoo” and a liquor store named “Tiendas Six”.

A CBP web page suggests there’s a border fence there, but if there is, agents either couldn’t stop the migrants who went over it, or those migrants had already been apprehended and released.

San Diego Sector Apprehensions. Not that I can blame the San Diego sector Border Patrol agents, as this has been an exceptionally busy year for them.

San Diego used to be one of the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine Southwest border sectors. In FY 2007, for example, when agents made 705,000 Southwest border apprehensions, more than 162,000 illegal migrants (23 percent of the total) were nabbed in San Diego sector.

Migration patterns shifted east, however, as increasing numbers of “other than Mexican” (OTM) aliens started coming illegally across the border. In FY 2019, as agents made just over 851,500 Southwest border apprehensions, fewer than 58,050 (7 percent) occurred in San Diego sector.

Border Patrol’s easternmost sector, Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in Texas, on the other hand, tallied more than 339,000 total apprehensions in FY 2019. RGV is a lot closer to the Central American travel routes smugglers use to bring OTM migrants here, and for smugglers, time and distance is money.

Despite the fact that OTMs have accounted for nearly seven out of 10 Border Patrol apprehensions in the first 10 months of FY 2024, however, smuggling patterns have shifted back west.

Through the end of July this fiscal year, San Diego sector agents have made more than 296,000 apprehensions, twice as many as they did in FY 2021 (fewer than 142,500), but more critically, 21 percent of total Southwest border apprehensions.

A big part of that shift has to do with a Texas state enforcement program called “Operation Lone Star”.

Under Lone Star, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has sent state troopers and National Guard troops to the Rio Grande to backfill overworked Border Patrol agents, and erected barriers along the river to deter migrants from crossing illegally.

With the border in Texas as a less attractive option, smugglers have shifted back toward Arizona and California, with Tucson sector (more than 440,000 FY 2024 apprehensions) and San Diego taking the brunt.

San Diego Sector Releases. Not only have the number of migrant apprehensions in San Diego sector surged, but so have migrant releases.

In early June, NewsNation reported that more than 143,000 illegal migrants had been released on local streets there since mid-September.

That came shortly after Fox News revealed that San Diego sector agents had been told to release single adult migrants from every country except for six former Soviet Republics (Russia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan).

Releases have purportedly declined there in recent weeks, but that may be a two-edged sword for agents. On the one hand, they are better able to do their jobs with respect to the migrants they have caught, but on the other hand it makes it more likely that migrants will evade apprehension instead of turning themselves in with the prospect of a quick release.

Consequently, either the migrants who attempted to board school buses near the border in Potrero, Calif., had been caught and released and were looking for a way into the interior, or they jumped the line and were searching for the quickest way out.

Regardless, its unacceptable, posing a threat to the drivers and students and a risk to the migrants themselves — to say nothing about the impact that it has on community safety.

Given all the benefits that the Biden-Harris administration has extended to migrants who have entered illegally — quick releases, work authorization, and transport into the interior, to name a few — however, perhaps we should cut those migrants a break.

The administration has done more than it could (legally) to invite migrants to come here illegally, and if you were on the outside looking at all of the benefits that migrants have already received here, you might conclude that the freebies and perks will start as soon as you get here.

The administration, in fact, uses yellow school buses to ship migrants who have taken advantage of its CBP One app interview scheme over the border and into the United States, as my colleague Todd Bensman has reported, so perhaps the migrants in the Potrero incident were simply confused.

Thanks to the current administration, every community is now a border community, but there are a lot of true border communities deserving of the same security all Americans should expect. At a bus stop on an isolated stretch of road in California, parents and their children aren’t being protected from illegal migration, and for that I blame the administration as much as I blame the migrants.