White House lies about terrorist threat at border

When it comes to our open borders, the lies never end.

Even on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, government spokesmen continue to lie. On Thursday, the president’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, said we need not worry about such things. The Bloomberg News headline read: “Earnest discounts Islamic State threat on Mexican border.” This lie was necessary because a government agency had issued an alert about known terror cells operating in Ciudad Juarez, which adjoins El Paso, Texas...

Using only official Border Patrol data on border crossings, we know a problem exists on our southwest border with Mexico. In fact, everyone knows that except the Obama White House...

In 2013 alone, there were not 57,000 but a total of over 75,000 “OTMs” – Other Than Mexican – apprehended on the border. Of that number, over 1,200 were individuals from countries known by our government to harbor terrorist cells. Those countries include Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Indonesia.

Now, there is something else Americans need to know besides those official numbers. Americans need to know that even the Border Patrol and the U.S. Congress do not believe the numbers are accurate. There is another very important number Josh Earnest and other Obama administration officials would undoubtedly lie about if they ever had the opportunity. That is the Border Patrol’s “Gotaway Rate.”

Until very recently and throughout the history of the U.S. Border Patrol since its inception in 1922, the weekly reports from its field offices included not only the number of apprehensions in the sector but also the estimated “Gotaways.” That is the number of illegal border crossers spotted and counted but not apprehended. The ratio of the number of Gotaways to the number of apprehensions was called the Gotaway Rate. The Gotaway Rate would naturally vary between sectors and also vary over time, but veteran Border Patrol officers have testified that the ratio was usually 3-to-1 and often much higher.

...you will be comforted to learn that the Obama administration recently fixed that problem by abolishing the “Gotaway Rate.” That estimate is no longer being collected by Border Patrol field offices...

In the fiscal year 2013, the official apprehension number was 420,789, up by 28 percent from a low point of 340,252 in 2011. If the Gotaway Rate was 3-to-1, that means that while the Border Patrol was catching and then processing 420,789 individuals, three times that number – or over 1,200,000 individuals – were evading capture and successfully entering the county. Even if we cut that number in half to allow for double counting in the official apprehension number, that is still over a half a million successful border crossings in 2013 alone.

That also means the number of OTMs from countries with terrorist cells was possibly three times as larger than the official number of 1,200. This does not mean that 3,000 terrorists came across the southwest border last year, but it does mean this: Among the house painters and peach harvesters and landscape workers, since the terrorist attacks of 2001, over 30,000 persons from countries that harbor terrorists and whose identities we do not know have come across our land borders...

CAIRCO Research

This research uses the number of "gotaways" to estimate the true numbers of illegal aliens who have evaded capture and are living in the US:

How many illegal aliens reside in the United States?

Also see:

The Social Contract issue “How many illegal aliens are in the U.S.?”, Summer 2007, which includes the articles:

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the U.S.? - An Alternative Methodology for Discovering the Numbers, by Fred Elbel.

Illegal Aliens: Counting the Uncountable, by James H. Walsh.

The Challenge of Accurately Estimating the Population of Illegal Immigrants, by Nancy Bolton.