Title 42, which allowed law enforcement to prevent migrants from entering the United States under a health clause, ended in May. The White House claims there’s been a decrease in illegal immigration since then, but Republicans say that’s nothing but a diversion, a smokescreen. In fact, the numbers are continuing to increase while aliens are being released into neighborhoods. What is really happening?
A Numbers Game on the Hordes of Migrants
Mainstream media and the White House say the ending of Title 42 in May didn’t increase illegal crossings. CNN wrote, “US authorities saw a 50% drop in the number of migrant encounters along the border over the previous two days compared to earlier in the week” and “US and Mexican officials say the Biden administration’s warnings to asylum-seekers and displays of immigration enforcement have deterred more migrants from crossing the border illegally.”
But that is deceiving, according to the Border Crisis Startling Stats report by Republicans that pointed out:
“While the Biden Administration is celebrating a reported 25% decrease in encounters between ports of entry, 35,317 aliens were encountered at ports of entry — 17% of the total encounters in May. According to the Office of Field Operations (OFO), this is a 20% increase from April 2023 and a staggering 34% increase from January 2023, when the CBP One app was first expanded to non-commercial use.”
A lot of that deflection is based on the CBP One app, a fast-track method for migrants to get processed at ports of entry. In early June, House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins (R-LA) criticized the app, saying it “is being used as a type of asylum application” that allows migrants to move to the front of the lines at ports of entry, be processed quickly, and without the normal vetting system.
The House Republicans accuse Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas of using the migrant app to skew the actual numbers of illegal entries. “The increase in OFO encounters depicts that once Title 42 ended on May 11, Secretary Mayorkas utilized the CBP One app to shift more, otherwise illegal, aliens to ports of entry in order to make it appear that ‘illegal’ crossings were decreasing,” the report stated. “Almost all of these inadmissible aliens will ultimately be released into the interior, regardless of whether they are granted parole.”
Higgins concurred, saying:
“Despite what Secretary Mayorkas and other officials at DHS are advising the American public regarding the numbers being down, what we’ve come to observe is rather a shell game in the way numbers are actually documented and reported. The numbers of human beings crossing into America without appropriate documentation are indeed still at the record levels that we saw prior to the end of Title 42 but the classification of those human beings, and the way they’re brought into the country, has been very cleverly changed by the administration.”
The app was implemented in January, and since then more than 100,000 foreign nationals have entered the United States using it, “a population equivalent to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and New Bedford, Massachusetts,” Breitbart News compared.
(Photo by Charlie C. Peebles/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
To further complicate matters, the Dedicated Dockets program the Biden administration started in May 2021 to fast-track the asylum process is not vetting immigrants. In 2022, data from the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Immigration Law and Policy showed that a whopping 99% of migrants crossing the border did not even have a valid claim for asylum. At the time, former acting ICE Director Thomas Homan told Breitbart News, “The most historic illegal alien crossings we’ve ever seen in the history of this nation … in that same year, ICE had the lowest number of removals in the history of the agency.”
Furthermore, according to the Republican report, “99% of all CBP One app applicants were accepted before the end of the Title 42 and released into the country, further showcasing the Biden administration’s deceptive catch-and-release tactics.”
With the ever-growing threat of China, it might be surprising and alarming to learn that encounters with Chinese nationals in fiscal year 2023 have gone up, with May showing a 1,200% increase compared to May 2022. But it’s not just the number of illegal migrants crossing the border that has grown, there also has been a surge in criminal apprehensions and drug seizures. Just look at some of these statistics from the House Republican report for FY23:
- CBP has arrested 20,923 aliens with criminal convictions, including 442 known gang members, 134 of those being MS-13.
- CBP has seized more than 20,000 pounds of fentanyl coming across the Southwest border—enough to kill 4.6 billion people. Federal officials estimate they are able to seize only 5-10% of all illegal drugs smuggled across the Southwest border.
- In May 2023, fentanyl seizures at the Southwest border increased 136% compared to May 2022. If this extreme rate of fentanyl interceptions continues, FY23 is on track to double last year’s total at the Southwest border.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions aptly described the situation in a policy memo:
“Not only is this state of affairs producing vast human misery; it is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of justice on which America is built.”
