They aren’t increasing at the same pace as earlier in the year, but for the month of April they were higher than any time in the last twenty-one(!) years:
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border hit a 21-year high last month, according to data released Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
In all, CBP encountered 178,622 people attempting to enter the United States, a three percent increase from March, and the most encounters in a single month since April of 2000, when 182,613 illegal immigrants were apprehended.
New York Post, “April saw most illegal immigrants stopped at border in 21 years: CBP,” 5/11/21
Here are some of the latest stats from Customs and Border Control. This first one is the overall total for the fiscal year. As you can see from the lower chart, we’re already at 76% of 2019’s “crisis” numbers with five months still remaining.
This next chart breaks down the interceptions by demographic. Although quite a bit has been made in the media of unaccompanied children and minors at the border, by far, the vast majority of intercepts have been single adults.
This next pic shows the distribution of intercept numbers along the border. Thirty percent were in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas where numerous reports of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande either on foot or by boat have been highlighted in the media. As you can also see, the vast majority of illegal immigrants (45%) are from Mexico.
Finally, this last chart gives the percentage of change, all of them UP, UP, UP compared to last year. Although the largest number of illegal immigrants were encountered in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the largest increase was in the Yuma sector in Arizona. The increase there was 618.5% over last year!
Even though Vice President Harris was tasked with the border issue, she’s yet to visit the border in person to assess the situation citing the risks related to Covid-19. It’s been fifty days since she was appointed the border czar and she’s yet to have a press conference about it even with mounting pressure.
In Arizona, where its Yuma sector saw a 600+% increase of illegal immigrants over last year, the state’s Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, sent a letter to President Biden asking for Harris to be removed from her roll as border czar:
Vice President Kamala Harris must be removed from her role in dealing with the border surge, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a letter this week to President Biden, saying his running mate has blown her chance to fix things.
Mr. Brnovich said it’s insulting to watch Ms. Harris make trips to other states for “less-pressing matters” while neither she nor Mr. Biden has visited Arizona or other border states to get an up-close look at the migrants surging across the boundary line from Mexico.
“Mr. President, we cannot afford another day, week or month of apathy and inaction by any official in your administration charged with upholding our federal immigration laws and ensuring public safety,” the Republican attorney general wrote.
The Washington Times, “Arizona AG calls for Harris ouster as ‘border czar'”, 5/13/21
Even both Democrat senators from Arizona, Senator Sinema and Senator Kelly, have been balking about the immigration crisis at the border. Kelly is particularly vulnerable because he’s up for re-election next year so he needs to make noise to help in his bid to stay in office. Both he and Sinema have called for the feds to reimburse Arizona for the governor’s deployment of the National Guard to the border to aid CBP.
You would think that with all this negative news, the Biden administration might start to rethink its rollback of Trump’s border policies that had been implemented after the surge in 2019 to get the numbers back under control. At least that would be the logical thing to do. But given that’s a logical position, don’t hold your breath on anything happening.
Pot Full of Frogs 