Over 170,000 illegal immigrants were stopped at the US-Mexico border last month, the third consecutive month that number was exceeded, according to Axios.
Citing preliminary US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data, Axios reported that the “more than 170,000 apprehensions last month” continue a trend of “20-year records set in March and April.”
The New York Post reported, “approximately 900,000 migrants have been apprehended between Oct. 1 and the end of last month, the most through eight months of a fiscal year since 2006.”
“CBP has not recorded more than 170,000 border encounters in three consecutive months since 2000, when at least 180,000 illegal immigrants were stopped in the first four months of that year,” the New York Post continued. “Authorities are on pace to apprehend approximately 1.35 million illegal immigrants, the most since 2000, when 1.68 million were apprehended.”
President Biden’s border crisis has been blamed on his presidential campaign rhetoric, which encouraged migrants to come to the United States. During his presidential nominee acceptance speech, Biden promised migrants that the United States would be their “safe haven.”
As Biden encouraged further illegal immigration, he stripped away many of former President Trump’s border security policies, including an emergency declaration that allowed for more funding to be allocated to border security. Biden’s plan to increase the severity of a problem while reducing the capacity for the United States to handle that problem has not panned out as well as he might have hoped, as his administration has been unable to handle the massive numbers of migrants.
For example, the inability to process migrant children quickly enough has led to children being illegally imprisoned in facilities described by the New York Times as “akin to jails.” According to the BBC, “thousands of children who are being kept in government-run detention facilities that critics say are inhumane. Almost 3,000 children have been kept for over 72 hours, the legal limit after which they are meant to be transferred to the custody of health officials in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pointed out the connection between Biden’s rhetoric and the surge in illegal immigration earlier this year, saying, “Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.”
