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Illegal immigration across the southern border tumbled to just a little more than 100,000 migrants encountered in July, the administration has announced, celebrating the numbers as proof that President Biden’s recent tougher approach is working.
Border Patrol agents reported nabbing about 56,000 illegal immigrants, the fewest since the fall of 2020. Those numbers were balanced out by a steady stream of illegal immigrants showing up for “catch and release” at official border crossings.
Customs and Border Protection said Friday it encountered 104,116 unauthorized migrants along the southern border in July. That’s down from about 130,000 in June and more than 300,000 in December, the all-time record.
The government also saw a drop in the number of unauthorized migrants being flown to airports inside the U.S.
That figure dropped from nearly 57,000 in June to about 48,000 in July, likely because of revelations of massive fraud in the “parole” program that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans had been using to bypass the border and fly into the airports. Homeland Security has curtailed the program amid the fraud.
Administration officials touted the numbers, saying they are better than former President Donald Trump achieved in 2019, amid his own migrant surge.
White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said the improvements are the result of “decisive executive actions” that Mr. Biden took.
“The Biden-Harris administration has taken effective action, and Republicans continue to do nothing,” he said.
The number of terrorism suspects is also low, with agents at the southern border detecting just three last month. The southern border total for this fiscal year is 96 migrants whose identities matched the terrorism watchlist.
Agents at the usually quiet northern border also detected one terrorism suspect entry in July, bringing the northern border total to two so far this fiscal year.
Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Biden administration is playing a “massive shell game” in converting border jumpers into “parole” migrants. He said no matter how they enter, they are still ending up in American communities.
Mr. Green, Tennessee Republican, also said the millions of immigrants already admitted to the U.S. illegally aren’t going anywhere.
“Even if another illegal alien did not cross our Southwest border for the remainder of Biden-Harris’ term, the millions they have already allowed into our country have done damage that will take decades to remedy,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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