The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put out a “Myth vs. Fact” sheet on November 1 about the migrant caravan approaching from the south. It included some truly startling numbers:
So far, there are over 270 individuals along the caravan route that have criminal histories, including known gang membership.
Two-hundred-seventy! Now, it’s not clear how DHS arrived at that figure, but according to a BBC report on November 4 from Mexico, the caravan INVASION currently is about 5,000 people strong, 2,400 of whom are children.
The DHS release also cited the numbers of U.S. troops being deployed to the border to face this onslaught of humanity:
By November 2, there will be approximately 5,200 deployed to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Southwest border as part of Operation Faithful Patriot. This is in addition to the 2,000 National Guardsmen currently deployed for Operation Guardian Support.
And our president has said he may deploy up to 15,000 troops.
As it currently stands, we’ll have at the border:
- 7,200 military personnel
- At least several thousand Border Patrol agents (of which there are more than 19,000 total, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Snapshot)
- Possibly more than 100 aviation enforcement agents (of which there are more than 250 available, according to the Snapshot)
- Likely more than 1,000 canine teams (more than 1,500 total available according to the Snapshot)
- And perhaps 200 horse patrol teams (375 available according to the Snapshot)
And let’s not forget our own patriotic gun-toter “militias” heading down there to do their part to keep the brown horde at bay. (I guess most of these guys don’t have real jobs.) As one gun toter told the Washington Post:
“We’ll observe and report, and offer aid in any way we can,” said Shannon McGauley, a bail bondsman in the Dallas suburbs who is president of the Texas Minutemen. McGauley said he was preparing to head for the Rio Grande in coming days. The Texas Minutemen, according to McGauley, have 100 volunteers en route to the Rio Grande who want to help stop the migrants, with more likely on the way.
Hey, I guess the bail bond business can wait while ol’ Shannon and his buddies self-deploy to the border to back up the approximately 18,500 military and Border Patrol personnel set to repel the invading horde of 270 criminals, 2,400 children and 2,300 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Roll in the few hundred gun-toting play soldiers militia patriots, and the INVADERS will be outnumbered nearly four-to-one. The criminal element (270) will be outnumbered nearly 80-to-one.
I don’t know about you, but I’m terrified!
Thank god for the miles of concertina razor wire being laid down by the military, a barrier which has caused our Fearless Leader to wax poetic at his recent rallies:
“These are bad people — as I say bad hombres,” Trump said. “There are some bad hombres in that group. So they came out with a list of 300 really bad ones, really bad ones. They’re in there. And I noticed all that beautiful barbed wire going up today, barbed wire used properly can be a beautiful sight,” he said.
Okay, I guess at some point I just gotta ask… When did we become such a nation of chickenshits?
And, don’t forget, these INVADERS are walking to the United States from Honduras.
Walking.
Google Maps estimates that’s 2,300 miles, with nearly 65,000 feet of climbing, encompassing nearly 734 hours of walking time. Sure, the lucky ones get to hop on a truck or a bus occasionally, but, for the most part, they’re walking.
It brings me back to my childhood when my mom would load up my sister, my brother and me onto the el, take us downtown to the observatory at the Prudential Building (then the tallest building in Chicago), walk us down Michigan Avenue to the Art Institute, and, then, literally, drag us kicking and screaming all the way over to the Adler Planetarium and Shedd Aquarium a mile away. A friggin’ mile. And we’d be whining like screeching cats. (My poor mother. Trying to give us culture.)
But from listening to Trump and Fox News, one would believe that we’re facing an Armageddon-style invasion. The scare-mongering shrieks coming out of the flat screen seem to have sent loads of red-blooded, frothing-at-the-mouth American patriots to the ramparts, assuming they can get up from their Barcaloungers®.
I don’t know when we became so scared and so weak that we had to spend god-knows-how-much of our tax dollars fighting an “invasion” of two-thousand-mile walkers that may include a couple hundred lowlifes. Talk about overkill.
Regardless of what one thinks about the folks in the caravan, we could probably learn a thing or two about toughness from people who decide to leave home and walk more than 2,000 miles while scaling the equivalent Mount Everest twice just to get to a better place. Maybe we should be scared of them. They are some supremely tough mofos.
