Most conservatives are utterly bewildered by the national apathy toward the ongoing border crisis. They wonder why more Americans aren’t outraged by the onslaught of unscreened aliens illegally flooding across our border, or by an American President who ignores our immigration laws, who is unilaterally dismantling our border controls.

Only a very small number of Americans actually support open borders. But let’s face it. Even those who oppose Biden’s border policies already have enough on their plates. They don’t really pay much attention to problems thousands of miles away, even potentially catastrophic problems – not until they’re somehow directly impacted.

And there’s something else that helps keep many Americans complacent about the border situation. It’s media articles like this one by the Associated Press: Big drop in migrant kids at largest emergency shelter.

The article focuses on the Fort Bliss housing facility in El Paso, TX, Biden’s largest emergency shelter for migrant children crossing the U.S. – Mexico border. According to the article, there’s been a 40 percent reduction of occupants in that facility since mid-June.

It goes on to report that in May of this year, 4,800 children were housed at the Fort Bliss facility, but that number was reduced to 2,000 boys and girls by mid-June. And now Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Xavier Becerra, is boasting that only 790 boys remain at the Fort Bliss facility, and that the last girl just left. He went on to suggest that, “Because we’ve been successful in managing the flow, we are prepared to begin the demobilization of several of our emergency intake sites.”

It sounds like an amazing success story, and anyone reading it might well conclude that the Biden Administration has finally gotten a handle on this migrant crisis.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chart compares this year’s encounters of illegal immigrants to last year’s. It reveals the truth. The explosive increase in illegal immigration is both unabated and unsustainable.

But the AP article offers reassurance to those who want to believe there’s no border crisis. It creates the misconception that everything is under control. When Becerra talked about “managing the flow,” he wasn’t talking about reducing the flow in any way. He simply meant that they’ve succeeded in eliminating the bottleneck. They haven’t turned off the spigot – they’ve just unkinked the hose. The administration is now facilitating and expediting – in fact, streamlining – the process of illegal immigration.

And neither Democrats nor the media seem too concerned about the final destination of those children, or their ultimate fate. The article briefly mentions that, “All the girls were reunited either with relatives in the U.S. or a sponsor such as a family friend or sent to licensed facilities...” There seems to be no interest whatsoever in the actual number who wound up as wards of the state, or how those “family friends” were verified and vetted. The important thing was that HHS successfully emptied those over-crowded facilities.

The 4,800 children discussed in the article are just a microcosm of the nearly 80,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally entered this year. Where did they go, and who will care for them? Who will support them? And something else not addressed are the hundreds of thousands of single adults and family units who illegally entered our country since Biden took office. Where have they been spirited off to?

Biden supporters reading the AP article will no doubt be satisfied, confident that this administration has the crisis under control. But like so many progressive success stories, it’s just an illusion.

It could be said that Democrats are veritable masters of illusion.

They use sleight-of-hand, half-truths, and misdirection to make fantasies seem real. Untold numbers of illegal immigrants vanish into thin air, and utter chaos on the border is magically transformed into a manageable challenge. Their wide-eyed audience members have come to believe the magic is real.

Professional stage magicians usually use some kind of patter, a scripted, often fantastical story, to segue into the next illusion. For example, one might talk about learning his skills from some mystical being he encountered in some exotic land. Democrats have their own patter, their own fantastical stories – like the one about inheriting a crisis on our border.

And we can’t forget about the lovely assistant. Anyone who’s ever seen a stage magician perform knows he often use an assistant, a confederate to help him with his more elaborate tricks. It’s usually an attractive woman, whose main responsibility is to make the illusionist look good. It’s pretty clear the news media has assumed that role for the illusionists in today’s Democrat Party.

Democrats and the media are still working out the bugs in their latest bit. But when they’re finished, the Vanishing Border Crisis will rival David Copperfield’s amazing Disappearing Statue of Liberty.