Biden’s border honeymoon is short-lived
Conn Carroll
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President Joe Biden’s plan to spin the continuing border crisis as a success story took a hit this week as preliminary border numbers leaked to friendly news outlets show that what little progress Biden made in reducing illegal immigration in June was erased by a new spike in illegal immigration in July.
Biden’s most recent plan to contain the border crisis he created went something like this: encourage record high numbers of illegal immigrants to cross in the days before Title 42 was set to expire on May 11, and then step up removals from the border in the days after Title 42 expired to make it appear the new program was working.
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And if you cherry-pick the right days, Biden’s plan did look like a success. One outlet reported that border apprehensions had declined 70% since Biden’s new policy took effect.
But even before the leak of July’s numbers, it was clear from the June numbers that the change at the border was not as stark as Biden wanted people to believe. Stepping back, there were 144,571 illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border in June, which is a 30% drop from May. But that June 2023 number is still higher than the highest number under former President Donald Trump (144,116 in May 2019), a number that everyone agreed at the time was a crisis.
So even with the limited progress Biden made in June, the border was still in crisis, as it has been ever since Biden began dismantling Trump’s border security policies on his first day in office.
Now we learn that what small progress made by Biden in June has evaporated in July. Nick Miroff reports that preliminary figures leaked to him by Customs and Border Protection officials show illegal border crossings jumped more than 30% in July, compared to June’s numbers.
“Border crossings have historically dipped during the hottest months of the summer. But that did not occur in 2021 nor this year, an indication that migration patterns are more attuned to smugglers’ operations and perceived changes in U.S. enforcement, rather than the weather, according to CBP officials,” Miroff said.
In this case, smugglers have figured out it is more likely the immigrants they are paid to traffic across the border will be caught and released if they cross in Arizona than if they cross in Texas, where they are more likely to be caught and sent back to Mexico.
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Even this weakened state of border enforcement is threatened by a liberal judge in California who ruled last month the federal government has no right to deny anyone immediate entrance into the United States. As the Biden administration has argued in court, such a ruling, if sustained on appeal, would cause a “surge in border crossings” possibly higher than the pre-May 11 records.
Biden has already set records for illegal immigration in 2021 and 2022. 2023 is shaping up to be no different.