I have to give credit for the title to my friend Jim Geraghty at National Review and his Morning Jolt newsletter, but it’s about the best summary one could ask for. Throughout the ongoing immigration debate we’ve been talking about the surge of families and unaccompanied minors reaching the US border in 2014 as if it’s something that happened in the past. Well… it was. Then, for a while at least, the numbers came back down toward something approaching normal. Mexico promised to do a better job on their own southern border and to stop the flow through their country.

Sadly, that didn’t last long. We’re back up to levels which are double the same period one year ago and our resources are once again being overwhelmed. (Brainerd Dispatch)

“We’re at the limit of our resources,” Humberto Roque Villanueva, Mexico’s deputy interior minister responsible for migration, told Reuters.

The number of families stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped 122 percent between October 2015 and April 2016 from the same period a year earlier, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The number of detained “unaccompanied minors” – children traveling without relatives – was 74 percent higher. Most of the Central Americans come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

A 122% increase this winter over last is not a statistical fluctuation. It’s a massive increase to a system which was already struggling to keep its head above water with nominal numbers of illegals crossing the border. And the nearly 75% jump in unaccompanied minors is, if anything, even worse because we can’t simply stick them on a bus and drop them off over the Mexican border. Given the fate of too many children once they fall into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels, they’re probably better off back in whatever war torn region they came from.

Even more disturbing is the fact that Mexico seems to be increasingly incapable of helping or simply isn’t interested. While the number of families from Central America showing up at our border has more than doubled, fewer migrants have been captured in Mexico.

Despite those increases, fewer migrants are being caught as they move through Mexico. Over the same period, Mexico detained and deported about 5 percent fewer people than in 2014/15. So far this year, 3.5 percent fewer unaccompanied minors have been stopped.

We either don’t have a willing partner at the table in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants from Central America or we have one who is incapable of doing their part. DHS is talking about sending more training resources to Mexico to help them shore up their own southern border and detect migrants moving through the country, but is that going to help at this point? This isn’t some new problem which suddenly cropped up and the Mexican government hasn’t figured out how to respond yet. This highway for illegals has been in business for a very long time. So what are we supposed to do?

Is that wall really looking all that crazy now, now matter who builds it or pays for it?