Since the very first day that Joe Biden moved into the White House, an unprecedented number of migrants have been coming across the southern border.
We have always suspected that migrants were being pushed through the system without proper vetting or tracking and leaked emails from the Department of Homeland Security have now confirmed our worst fears.
Talking Points…
- Record-setting immigration numbers at the border
- Homeland Security emails
- Analysis
Over the last decade, border apprehensions were fairly consistent, right around the 400,000 mark every year. During 2019, that number surged dramatically with anticipation of certain programs being ended and the threat of Trump having a second term.
In 2019, there were more than 851,000 migrant encounters at the southern border. Trump made significant changes towards the latter part of the year to get this under control, lowering the number to just over 400,000 in 2020. However, as Trump was about to leave office, massive caravans and large groups were waiting at the border for Joe Biden to take office.
After Biden took office, encounters went to 1.14 million in 2021, 2.7 million in 2022, and 2.5 million in 2023. These are estimated numbers and do not include gotaways and total law enforcement encounters, with the overall number estimated to be 7.5 million nationwide and more than 9 million when you include gotaways.
While migrant encounters have soared, deportation percentages have dipped under Biden. So we have more people coming in and a smaller percentage of them going out than we have seen under previous administrations.
Conservative think tanks and pundits have been hammering Secretary Mayorkas for releasing what appears to be a majority of the migrants that have come into the country illegally since Biden took office, something that Mayorkas regularly denies when he is on the Hill. Conservatives' worst fears were realized when a report surfaced that exposed some DHS emails on the subject, showing that many of these migrants that are being released are not even being tracked by DHS.
In one email, a journalist had asked a DHS official where the migrants were going after they arrived in the country. Had they been going to cities like New York or DC, or were they more inclined to stay in the states where they had crossed the border, such as Texas and Arizona? The official replied:
"Off the record, that's hard for us to say because they're getting on those buses after they're already out of our custody.
"That said, anecdotally including what I hear from other reporters, it does appear that word is spreading and they are looking for those buses for the free transportation. I've also heard many people are getting off along the way, so they're using the buses for as long as it is convenient, but again, because they are out of our custody by then, it is hard for us to be able to answer that."
Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public's Trust, slammed the administration for not doing the most basic of tasks when it comes to controlling the border… tracking migrants after they are released. He stated:
"DHS attempts to claim they are not responsible for the crisis at the border and lack any means to solve the fast-developing disaster. At the same time, they admit to friendly members of the media off the record that they fail to perform even the most basic of functions.
" The Biden Administration came into office promising a return to normalcy, unprecedented transparency, and respect for the rule of law. These documents provide further evidence that, when it comes to our borders, they are 0-for-3."
This is all at the heart of the impeachment of Mayorkas, with the GOP and Border Patrol officials, such as Brandon Judd, the National Border Patrol Council union that represents border agents, calling out Mayorkas for failing to do his job and lying to Congress and the American people about it. To that point, Judd stated:
"Where he is breaking the law is when he allows these people to evade apprehension after they violate their order to appear or when they're ordered in and ordered deported in absentia, once that happens, he has an obligation under the law to find these individuals and ensure that they leave the country. And he's not doing that."
Mayorkas was recently asked if this administration takes any blame for the crisis at the border, and Mayorkas declined to do so, once again blaming it on an inherited broken system. If the system was broken, why are Biden's numbers four to five times as high as the norm and three times more than the worst year under the Trump administration?
