Illegal immigration across the southern border surged in July, challenging Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ claims of progress in gaining control of increased unlawful border crossings since the start of the Biden administration.
Border Patrol agents reported nabbing 132,652 people at the southern border in July, up 33% from June. Officials said they’re seeing a rise in families as migrants increasingly bring children with them on the dangerous journey.
That number nearly doubled in July to 60,161, compared with 31,266 in June.
Officers manning the ports of entry tallied more than 50,000 other unauthorized migrants arriving through crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Homeland Security Department released the numbers Friday afternoon, which is a standard Washington move to bury bad news.
Mr. Mayorkas, in testimony to Congress late last month, took a victory lap, saying changes he’d made earlier this year were paying off.
“Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely, even within our fundamentally broken immigration system, is working,” he said. “Unlawful entries between ports of entry along the southwest border have consistently decreased by more than half compared to the peak before the end of Title 42.”
That depends, however, on what one considers unlawful entry.
Mr. Mayorkas has encouraged unauthorized migrants — those without a visa or other entry permit — to forgo jumping the border and instead schedule their arrival at a port of entry, where he uses his “parole” power to catch and release them.
They are still in the country without legal permission, though Mr. Mayorkas argues they entered lawfully.
Mr. Mayorkas has aimed his parole powers at migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — all nations whose citizens had been cresting over the southern border late last year. Now, they are being told to apply ahead of time and to arrive at airports, so they don’t put pressure on the southern border.
In that respect, the move has been successful.
Total encounters at the southern border — which covers both Border Patrol arrests and processing of those who show up without a visa at official border crossings — numbered 183,503 in July.
That’s nearly 40,000 more than in June, but it’s still better than last spring, summer and fall when more than 200,000 unauthorized migrants were encountered each month.
A department official complained when a reporter called the increase in families “sharp.”
“While we have seen this shift in family unit encounters increase some, and are responding in kind to that increase. We would not call it a sharp increase,” he said.
One bright spot was the number of terrorism suspects. Border Patrol agents nabbed just six people on the government’s watchlist in July. That’s tied for the lowest month since the Department of Homeland Security began releasing records this past spring.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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