ELECTION PLOY: Migrant Apprehensions at Southern Border Hit Lowest Level of Biden Era

The arrests of migrants who illegally cross the southwest border with Mexico between points of entry hit its lowest mark of the Biden era. The sharp drop in migrant apprehensions follows a series of election-year gambits to distract voters from the previous three and a half years of failed border security policies.

Border Patrol agents apprehended 83,536 migrants who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border in June, according to the Southwest Land Border Encounters report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week.  The report catalogs the lowest number of migrant encounters since President Joe Biden was sworn in in January 2021.

In February 2021, President Biden’s first full month in office, migrant encounters jumped from 75,316 in January to 97,643. The numbers continued to climb for the next three years, peaking at nearly 250,000 in December 2023.

“Biden deserted his duty on his first day in office,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the assembled delegates of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday. “He gutted President Trump’s policies, and the result has been catastrophic.”

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Abbott went on to tell the convention attendees and a national television audience that the Biden border crisis has allowed more than 11 million migrants to illegally enter the United States.

As migrant apprehensions peaked in at nearly a quarter-million in December 2023, the Biden administration engaged with Mexico to negotiate a deal to get Mexico to slow the number of migrants reaching the U.S. southern border, Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark reported.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s willingness to crack down on migrant crossings may have more to do with securing an election victory for U.S. President Joe Biden and his own ruling Morena political party than securing the border,” Clark wrote earlier this year. “A temporary pause in migration designed to ensure a November win for the Democrats in the United States and a June win for AMLO’s Morena party candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, could keep the border wide open for years to come.” Sheinbaum went on to win the election to serve as the president of Mexico.

The temporary efforts by the Mexican government led to a near 50 percent drop in migrant apprehensions the following month, Breitbart Texas reported. Following dropping approval ratings for President Joe Biden on the topic of immigration and border security and a meeting between the Mexican president and two Biden administration cabinet members, actions taken by the Mexican government led to a drop of more than 125,000 migrant apprehensions in January.

Breitbart Texas reached out to members of Congress and the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson for information about an agreement between Mexico and the United States to reduce migrant crossings. One congressman replied that it was not clear if the Biden administration would ever disclose an agreement of this nature. There do not appear to be any reports disclosing what the U.S. may have agreed to in return for Mexico’s increased enforcement efforts.

An official operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Breitbart Texas that the efforts by Mexico are not a long-term fix to the problem. “The migrants are just being delayed from reaching the U.S. border,” the source stated. “The migrants are being moved further south, delaying their efforts to reach their goal of seeking asylum in the U.S.”

On June 4, President Biden signed an executive order to limit migrant encounters to 2,500 per day. However, even with the Biden era’s lowest apprehension report of 83,000 migrant encounters, the administration has yet to reach this goal.

Apprehensions in the San Diego, Tucson, and El Paso Sectors each apprehended more than 10,000 migrants in June. San Diego led with the arrest of more than 26,000 migrants. This was followed by more than 22,000 in the Tucson Sector and more than 14,500 in the El Paso Sector.

The apprehension numbers do not include more than 1.1 million migrants who the Biden administration has granted immigration parole under a program never authorized or funded by Congress, Breitbart News reported in June. The parole pipeline brings foreign nationals to the U.S. through the administration’s “CBP One” mobile app and “humanitarian parole,” Breitbart’s John Binder wrote.

The apprehension numbers also do not include more than 194,000 known got-aways so far this year, Breitbart Texas reported.

Migrant “got-aways” are estimates of migrants who are observed crossing the border and are not apprehended. Border Patrol agents who are out in the field to make these observations detect a good number of these. Some others are observed crossing by camera operators or other detection equipment, but no agents are available to make the apprehension. Still others are part of larger groups, and only a certain number of the group were apprehended.