The 1 Million Illegal Immigrant Encounters in Past 5 Months Is Equivalent to Population of Biden’s Delaware
Virginia Allen /
More than 1 million migrants have been encountered at the southern border just since fiscal year 2023 began on Oct. 1.
Fox News reported Saturday that Customs and Border Protection sources confirmed that migrants attempting to cross the border into the U.S. reached 1,008,217 as of Friday. “Of those, 87.8% were single adults,” Fox reported. “Just 328,454 were expelled under Title 42—the pandemic-era protocol that allows border agents to rapidly expel border crossers.”
The number of illegal-immigrant encounters at the border over the past five months is nearly double the population of Wyoming, or equal to the population of President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware.
“The 1 million-plus apprehensions for fiscal 2023 to date are only those we know about,” former Border Patrol Agent Frank Lopez told The Daily Signal. “The Biden administration has morphed the whole-of-government approach into a well-oiled machine to move as many people as possible into the U.S.,” he said.
Migrants are arriving at the border “because [of] the administration’s blatant disregard of immigration law and precedent has sent a ‘bat signal’ worldwide: ‘The U.S. border is open,’” said Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow with the Border Security and Immigration Center of The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“Under the leadership of Biden and his secretary of [the Department of] Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS has blatantly abused its limited statutory parole power, releasing hundreds of thousands of aliens into the country with the right to live and work for two years as they gum up the already sclerotic immigration courts with yet another claim that is unlikely to result in a grant of protection,” Hankinson told The Daily Signal, adding:
That we’re over a million illegal crossers, not even halfway into this fiscal year, follows from deliberate policy, and it will get worse. Biden’s fictitious new ‘legal pathways’ allowing aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply for parole from anywhere, using their cellphones, will add 30,000 cases a month to the pile.
“The administration’s brazen new attempt to expand these perverse ‘pathways’ through administrative fiat could open it up to the entire world,” Hankinson said, referring to the Biden administration’s controversial proposed asylum rule that aims to limit the number of migrants crossing the border between ports of entry, but which some border security advocate say won’t stop the flood of migrants entering the country.
“This is what mismanagement, dereliction of duty, and [one-sided] government looks like,” Hankinson said.
By the end of February of fiscal year 2022, Customs and Border Protection reported 839,819 encounters at the southern border. In the first five months of fiscal year 2021, CBP reported 397,549 migrant encounters, and 201,619 during the same time period in fiscal year 2020.
In fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 30, Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.3 million land encounters with migrants at the southern border.
“Joe Biden’s failed open-border policies have welcomed over 1 million lawbreakers through our southern border this fiscal year. Since Biden took office, nearly 6 million illegals have crossed the border, that we know of,” Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal.
“Democrats in Congress are complicit in this crisis with their support for sanctuary cities, stimulus checks to illegal aliens, and votes to hire less border agents,” Gosar said. “Republicans in Congress will hold Biden and Democrats accountable for their failed policies.”
News of the record number of migrant encounters at the southern border comes as Republicans appear to be preparing to hold an impeachment hearing on Mayorkas.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and a group of fellow Republican lawmakers say it’s time to impeach and remove Mayorkas from office over the crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border.
“It’s clear Secretary Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” Biggs said recently in a prepared statement calling for Mayorkas’ impeachment. “His conduct is willful and intentional. He is not enforcing the law and is violating his oath of office.”
Biggs first introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas in August 2021, when the Arizona lawmaker was chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. On Feb. 1, Biggs filed new articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, saying in a press release that Mayorkas “is the chief architect of the migration and drug invasion at our southern border.”
The House Judiciary Committee has held two hearings on the border crisis since the beginning of the year, and the Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday, “Every State Is a Border State: Examining Secretary Mayorkas’ Border Crisis.”
The Judiciary Committee has not announced a date for the Mayorkas impeachment hearing, but sources on Capitol Hill indicate a hearing will likely take place this year.
“By his policy decisions and misconduct as secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas has violated his oath of office, abused the powers of his office, and betrayed the trust of the American people,” Heritage Foundation immigration experts Hans von Spakovsky and Lora Ries, and Steven Bradbury, a Heritage distinguished fellow, wrote in a Feb. 6 report.
“As a direct result of his actions, the U.S. has become gripped by an unprecedented border, national security, and illegal immigration catastrophe,” they wrote.
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