Flawed Data Ignores Real Security Risks
A recent government report paints a rosy picture of border security. But the numbers it leaves out tell a much more dangerous story.
WASHINGTON D.C., United States (WHN) – The headlines practically wrote themselves. According to a new Department of Homeland Security bulletin, a key indicator of national security threats at the southern border is trending downward. It’s the kind of news the administration has been waiting for, a statistical victory lap in a policy area plagued by chaos. But the argument rests on a foundation of carefully selected, dangerously incomplete data. It’s a classic case of looking for your keys only where the light is shining.
The entire premise is a mistake. The DHS report highlights a 15% year-over-year decrease in the number of individuals on the terror watchlist apprehended by Border Patrol agents between official ports of entry. On its face, this sounds like progress. And officials have been quick to present it as such, a sign that enhanced enforcement in the rugged backcountry is working. The problem, however, isn’t what the data shows. It’s what it strategically ignores.
Two enormous security gaps are completely missing from this analysis. The first is the well-known but politically inconvenient category of “gotaways.” These are the individuals Border Patrol detects but cannot apprehend. They don’t stop for an interview, they don’t get fingerprinted, and they certainly don’t get checked against a watchlist. They simply disappear into the interior. According to internal Border Patrol estimates, that number for the last fiscal year wasn’t trivial. It was over 600,000. So, while DHS celebrates a small drop in one specific type of encounter, it says nothing about the hundreds of thousands of people who avoided an encounter altogether. Who are they? We have no idea, and that is a security risk of the highest order.
To trumpet a decline in one narrow metric while a population the size of a major city enters without vetting isn’t just bad analysis; it’s a dereliction of duty.
The second flaw is even more glaring. The DHS bulletin focuses exclusively on the land between ports of entry. But what about the ports themselves? What about the airports, the official land crossings, the seaports where millions of people are processed? A separate memo, circulated within Customs and Border Protection and not meant for public release, suggests a completely different reality. That document indicates that watchlist encounters at official ports of entry have actually increased by 40% over the same period. So, has the risk really decreased, or has it simply shifted to a different, more crowded venue?
This isn’t just an academic debate about statistics. It’s about the reality of risk assessment and resource allocation. Former CBP Commissioner Mark Bentley, in testimony prepared for the House Homeland Security Committee, called the DHS bulletin “a masterclass in statistical misdirection.” He’s right. When the government presents a sanitized version of the truth, it misleads not only the public but also its own frontline agents. It creates a false sense of security that can lead to complacency and flawed operational planning.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a troubling pattern of using data as a public relations tool rather than an honest diagnostic. We’ve seen it in shifting definitions of what constitutes a “secure” border and in the selective release of encounter numbers that align with a preferred political narrative. The argument that the border is under control becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you simply stop counting the parts that are out of control. But ignoring a problem doesn’t make it disappear. History shows it almost always makes it worse.
The opportunity here is for intellectual honesty. A genuine assessment wouldn’t cherry-pick data points. It would integrate all of them: the known encounters, the watchlist hits at ports of entry, and a candid, public estimate of the gotaways. Only then can Congress and the American people have a clear-eyed conversation about the resources and strategies needed to manage a complex and evolving threat.
Until then, we’re left with a dangerously incomplete picture. The administration is celebrating a battle it claims to be winning, while ignoring the fact that it has left entire flanks of the battlefield unguarded. The real risk isn’t just the people we catch; it’s the ones we don’t. And no amount of carefully curated data will change that fundamental truth.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is scheduled to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee next month to discuss the report’s findings.
