The “border crisis” exists only in the dark imagination of Republican officials. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, migrant apprehensions have dropped to the lowest level since Biden took office.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, migrant crossings have declined every month for the past five months. Data showed migrant encounters declined from Texas to California. CBP reported 56,408 migrant encounters between ports of entry in July, down 57% from 132,642 the same month a year ago and down 32% from June.
CBP reported declines across all demographics – single adults, family units, unaccompanied minors – at a time when seasonal migration usually surges.
The surge in unauthorized immigration in Biden’s first few years was spurred by major factors outside of the president’s control, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and upheaval in Latin American countries.
Kamala Harris took on diplomatic missions in Northern Triangle countries in March 2021, and there was a 72% drop in immigration from Central America between March 2021 and June 2024.
Harris was never the “border czar.” She was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy. Instead, she worked successfully with the leaders, NGOs, and business executives in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to stem migration at the source. Harris helped raise $5 billion from the private sector for job creation and entrepreneurship and directed more than 10 million COVID-19 vaccines to the countries.
Mexico has blocked the path north with a busing program that apprehends migrants on highways, train routes, and airports, and ships them to its southern border with Guatemala.
Republicans are the problem.
The real debacle is that Republican U.S. Senators rejected bipartisan border legislation in May 2024 at Trump’s behest. The compromise bill included funds for hundreds of additional Border Patrol agents and detention capacity. It tightened access to the U.S. asylum system and ended the Border Patrol practice of apprehending migrants and releasing them into the U.S. to pursue their claims.
Trump slurs immigrants as being murderers and rapists. Republicans are flooding TV with misleading ads about immigrants. This is another GOP hate-fantasy. A 2023 report from a group of economists found immigrants are at least 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born individuals.”
Faced with Republican intransigence, Biden signed an executive order in June, dramatically reducing border crossings to a three-year low. The order temporarily shuts down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters tops 2,500.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also introduced effective measures, including the creation of new, lawful pathways for migrants to enter the U.S. in an orderly way; consequences for crossing illegally; tougher restrictions on asylum; and hard-won diplomacy with Mexico, Guatemala, Panama and Colombia as those countries boost their own border enforcement and humanitarian relief programs.
The Department of Homeland Security began ramping up deportations and removals from the U.S., too. In July, Mayorkas announced a deal under which the U.S. will pay Panama to deport foreign nationals.
There are so few crossings now that rabid MAGA Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has been unable to send his notorious “migrant buses” to Chicago, Denver and New York. “Fewer illegal crossings into Texas means there are fewer buses departing for sanctuary cities,” said spokesman Andrew Mahaleris.
Daniel Berlin of the International Rescue Committee said, “Regardless of what smuggling networks and other channels are saying the U.S. border is not open by any stretch. It’s as closed as it has been for a long time.”
Trump’s only solution is to build his failed border wall. Trump wasted $15 billion — most of it from military funds — to build a total of 738 miles of wall, which comes out to $20 million a mile.
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If that is your election year line, Trump is a sure winner. Nobody is going to believe that.
The border was under control when Trump replaced Obama’s “catch and release” policy with his “stay in Mexico.” On day one Biden-Harris rescinded Trump’s order and then over 90 other Trump executive orders securing the border, resulting in the wave of illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers.
Entries have only been down recently because the election is coming, and the border crisis is one of the top two issues on voters’ minds, so Biden increased crossing restrictions. If Harris wins, everyone knows it will be back to the Bided-Harris open border policy.
And by the way, how would legalizing all the illegals here deter future border crossers and vias overstays. Answer that!
Three times in the Bush, Obama, and Biden Administrations Republicans were invited to sign up for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Three times they put party over country. Earlier this year, they abandoned their own bipartisan border security bill because their American Duce wannabe told them so he could have the issue to campaign on. Facts are indeed stubborn things and legislation is preferable, and legally harder to overrule than Executive Orders.
How will legalizing all of the people who came into the country illegally deter other people from doing the same thing? Seems to me that your comprehensive reform will make matters worse. Please explain.
Oh my, you’re doing it again, John Who Feeds Himself with Government Checks Kavanagh.
Making demands without giving any real opinions of your own. What a politician you are! LOL.
You say it “seems” to you that reform will make matters worse.
How so? Please explain.
Put up or shut up. What in particular is your issue(s) with the last reform bill?
Please show your work, you lazy old racist sumbich.
While you’re at it, please explain the economic damage deporting 20 million people would do to the American economy.
Because that’s what Don-old says he’s going to do.
How do you think the stock market would react to American businesses losing 20 million customers?
How would home prices do when millions of homes are suddenly empty?
And if we built your useless wall (useless because ladders and shovels, etc., exist, and most drugs/people come through ports of entry NOT the border) and we locked down the border, what would prevent the US government from using that wall to keep people in?
What if China offers techies double pay or more to come there? If that was a danger to American’s economy? Would you prevent people from leaving?
You really don’t seem to understand how Capitalism and freedom work, or maybe you’re a commie, hard to tell.
I mean, you don’t like people voting, kinda’ commie-like if you ask me. You don’t want people leaving, again, wow, how very Stalin and/or Mao of you! Very North Korean in your thinking, ain’t ya?
If I’ve made “assumptions” about you actually thinking things through I apologize in advance.
@SEen. Kavanagh –
Your guy initiated a policy of separating kids from their parents at the border.
Now many of those kids cannot be found.
And now he’s trying to blame the subsequent presidential administration for his act.
Guessing that’s why he was so happy that his USSC justices rendered an “immunity ” decision; I’m just surprised that they didn’t just use the word “trafficking” in it.
I wonder if ‘accessory” laws apply to justices on the Supreme Court.
John “I Support Project 2025” Kavanagh is not honest when it comes to the border.
He doesn’t care if convicted rapist and felon Trump destroys the economy by deporting 20 million people (business losing 20,000,000 customers is kind of a problem for a consumer based economy), he just wants the brown people gone.
If it destroy’s America, oh well!
Migration is a basic human right, even the Bible says so, not that Christians care what’s in the book they’ve never read.
Border issues will never be solved because the big ag companies like having people they can pay little to nothing, and have deported instead of providing things like worker’s comp and safe working conditions.
R’s support big ag 100%, so they’ll never agree to a rational border policy, and everyone is correctly pointing out that John “Oh Man Do I Love Me Some Project 2025” Kavanagh knows that R’s killed the last border legislation to help convicted rapist and felon Don-Old Trump.
John “Who Absolutely Supports Project 2025” Kavanagh knows this, but again, he really, really doesn’t like brown people.
Racism is insecurity, and we know from his comments here he’s as insecure as it gets.
If he wasn’t so insecure, he’d admit his support for Project 2025.
Off topic – John Who Lives on Taxpayer Money Kavanagh’s party in Arizona is suing Hobbs for opening up more voting places.
WTF?!!!! We should be opening more voting places so more AMERICANS can vote. So more AMERICANS can participate in this great democratic experiment.
They don’t want people voting because they’re COWARDS.
I comment here a lot and some folks may think I’m harsh on JGCK but I’m not nearly as harsh as he and his party deserve.
He comes here with his border (racist) BS and tells lies and insults and makes demands and plays his little boy games while he and his party work to destroy American values.
They hate Democracy, they hate Americans, and they hate America.
F’ the Arizona GOP.
The once proud Republican party has been reduced to a pack of mushroom bobbing Trumpwipes.
If Abraham Lincoln could see what his party has become he very well may have taken the derringer from John Wilkes Booth & done the deed himself.
So Don-old made a campaign visit to the border here this week.
And I see some supporter of convicted rapist and felon Don-old J Trump who has a ranch there was saying Don-old’s border visit was a joke, because the portion of the wall he was touting as an achievement was actually put up during the Obama administration.
Fact checked by one of his own supporters!
Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Did anyone see the picture of him out there in the Arizona sun? The heat was unkind to his makeup, and that’s putting it nicely.
He looked like something from The Walking Dead. Google it, but it’s something you can’t unsee.
I get the makeup when you’re on TV, the lights and cameras are unkind to even the best looking people, but any random Arizonan could have told him it was a bad idea to cake more makeup on than a drag queen and then give a speech in the Sonoran sunshine in August.
Again, ahahahahahahahahahahaha!
what, are you saying that the GOP as a whole, and that each GOP politician running for office are lying about the border?
For years no one has wanted to address the root of the issue until Biden/Harris and the Media was well nigh unconcerned until GOP pols used it as a cudgel to beat Dems with and didn’t give a shit about trying to solve the problem.
What?
‘Fear the other ‘ is a stock GOP talking point, and deriding anyone who doesn’t espouse it is a de facto position for GOP candidates.