The deaths of 13 U.S. service members killed in Kabul and the ongoing agony of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans and its allies stranded in Afghanistan have overshadowed the Biden administration’s mishandling of the crisis on our southern border.

Several new reports added fuel to the fire created by Biden policies which attempted to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies.

A distressing new report by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows that of the more than 344,000 immigrants booked into local Texas jails during the month of June, over 235,000 were classified as illegal immigrants. Most troublesome are the criminal offenses with which they were charged: 1,245 homicides, 66,924 assaults, 17,456 burglaries, 72,835 drug charges, 980 kidnappings, 33,335 thefts, 4,155 robberies, 7,076 sexual assaults, 8,332 sexual offenses, 49,408 obstructing police charges and 8,317 weapons charges.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy, have been traveling around their state to experience the consequences of the border crisis firsthand. During one round table with local officials, Cruz said the maddening thing about the crisis is that it is man-made - the result of deliberate political decisions made by the Biden administration.

Cruz cited three reasons for the turmoil: Biden’s halt to border wall construction; reinstatement of a “failed” catch-and-release policy; and Biden’s decision” to end the successful remain in Mexico policy.

The Mexican cartels are the ones profiting the most from the disastrous policies. It’s estimated that cartels can take in up to $14 million a day for smuggling people, including unaccompanied children, across the border.

The migrants can actually distract from the smuggling of thousands of pounds of illegal drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl, into the country. Rep. Kevin McCarthy said if fentanyl is altered, it can be significantly more lethal than morphine, killing even more than the tens of thousands of Americans it claims each year.

According to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the month of April alone saw a 233 percent increase in fentanyl seizures at the southern border. Since it’s so cheap to produce fentanyl in China, it’s no surprise that Mexican cartels remain the largest black market customers of these deadly Chinese-made chemicals.

Many of the left who support illegal immigration argue that the immigrants now flooding across the southern border are people simply seeking a better life. In most cases that’s true - many of our own ancestries can be traced to the great European migration period during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

But our ancestors went through the legal process. Today, immigration officials and law enforcement are being stretched to the limit by the massive amount of illegal entries.

After spending 30 years in the agency, Thomas Feeley recently left his job as the director of New York’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement removals, explaining that he was fed up with the Biden administration’s “wide open” border policies which he said endangers our national security.

In an email, he said the border crisis has gotten so bad that immigrants crossing over are being processed over the phone after entering the U.S. The Biden administration, he said, isn’t telling ICE agents to break the law but they’re definitely telling them not to enforce it.

In one case he explained how he was told to release a convicted arsonist under the criteria that if someone hasn’t been arrested in the past 10 years, he’s to be released. When he explained that the reason he hasn’t been arrested is because he had been in prison for 12 years, he was told “We don’t really care.”

In his email, Feeley wrote:

“With the current administration doing everything they can to cripple ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations), endangering the American public, and not enforcing the laws passed by Congress, I don’t want to be part of that.

“As a member of the Senior Executive Service, a service entrusted by the public to ensure whatever administration is in charge follow the law, we currently are not. To fight and argue every day about not arresting or releasing horrible criminal aliens to the street, quite frankly is disgusting.”

Contrary to what the Biden administration is reporting, the Border Patrol agents with boots on the ground say they are being overwhelmed.

As long as this administration continues to encourage unaccompanied immigrant minors to come to the border - showering them with immigration benefits - the border disaster will only worsen.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.