The invasion is reaching new heights. The system is being overloaded. And the invaders are becoming ever more arrogant.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday during a visit to El Paso that the border had hit its “breaking point” and urged Congress to come up with legislative solutions to the problem.

Border Patrol officials were on pace in March for more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants – the highest monthly tally in over a decade, he said. Around 90 percent of those – or 90,000 – crossed the border between legal ports of entry.

“The surge numbers are just overwhelming the entire system,” McAleenan said.

This is an invasion. We will either defeat it. Or it will defeat us.

Increasingly, smugglers are bringing larger numbers of families together and delivering them across the Rio Grande, knowing they’ll overrun facilities and be released until their immigration court date, she said. 

Usually, Border Patrol hands them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which can detain families for up to 20 days. But all of those facilities are overcrowded, Brown said, leading Border Patrol to skip the transfer to ICE and release migrants to shelters en masse.

“This is a system-wide collapse,” she said.

We’re losing.

A wall can stop some of this. But what we really need is to stop accepting applications for asylum, stop detaining migrants caught entering the country, and stop allowing the system to be overloaded and abused. 

When someone breaks into your house, you don’t process their application to move in with you.