Politicians and others in the U.S. have sent the message that the we aren't serious about immigration enforcement and that we're going to implement comprehensive immigration reform. That message hasn't gone unheeded in Latin America, and thousands of unaccompanied children have responded by trying to cross the border illegally. This has caused Obama and Jeh Johnson to pretend to be concerned about an issue they helped create.

From Alicia Caldwell of the Associated Press ( peekURL.com/zyRMYS8 , bolding added):

Border Patrol agents could arrest as many as 90,000 children trying to illegally cross the Mexican border alone this year, more than three times the number of children apprehended in 2013, according to a draft internal Homeland Security memorandum reviewed by The Associated Press.

In the May 30 memo from Border Patrol Deputy Chief Ronald Vitiello to the National Security Council's transborder security directorate, Vitiello said Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics estimates that by 2015 the number of children apprehended while traveling alone could grow to 142,000.,,

,,,Many families from countries other than Mexico have been released on their own recognizance in the U.S. while they await deportation proceedings in immigration court.

Releasing those people and taking other actions such as reuniting children caught alone at the border with parents or other relatives already in the U.S. serve as "incentives to additional individuals to follow the same path," Vitiello wrote.

The number of children found trying to cross the Mexican border without parents has spiked in recent years. Between 2008 and 2011, 6,000 to 7,500 children per year ended up in the custody of the Health and Human Services Department's Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 2012 border agents apprehended 13,625 unaccompanied children and that number surged to more than 24,000 last year.

Note that all those figures are of children traveling alone, and don't include children traveling with adults.

Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times has more, with slightly different figures ( peekURL.com/zNVWnxX ):

...Chief Vitiello paints a picture of a government struggling to cope, leaving the children suffering poor conditions, agents unable to focus on major security threats and little sense that it will get better.

Known within the Homeland Security Department as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), their numbers have skyrocketed this year, forcing the department to siphon manpower and money from its other critical border duties.

“The large quantity of DHS interdiction, intelligence, investigation, processing, detention and removal resources currently being dedicated to address UAC is compromising DHS capabilities to address other transborder criminal areas, such as human smuggling and trafficking and illicit drug, weapons, commercial and financial operations,” Chief Vitiello wrote in the memo, which was viewed by The Washington Times.

“Insufficient attention to these mission areas will have immediate and potentially long-lasting impacts on criminal enterprise operations within the Rio Grande Valley and across the country,” Chief Vitiello wrote.

What can you do about this? When you see a political leader pretending to be concerned about this issue, point out how they helped cause it in the first place. See that page for a specific example.