The bureaucratic wall works. Arrests at the Mexican border for illegal crossing fell 29% in June, from 118,000 the previous month to 83,000, the lowest number during Joe Biden’s presidency, according to The report The report, published Monday by the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), is the first official statistical evidence, following comments by officials and the president himself in recent weeks, of the impact of the new and strict immigration measure promoted by the Democrat seeking reelection, which went into effect on June 5 and severely hinders asylum applications in the country. In the framework of the implementation of the recent rule, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also expelled or returned 70,000 people to more than 170 countries, including directly operating more than 150 international repatriation flights.
“Recent border security measures have had a significant impact on our ability to impose consequences on those who cross illegally, […] “with a more than 50% drop in the seven-day average from the announcement through the end of the month, and doubling the rate at which we remove noncitizens from Border Patrol custody,” Troy A. Miller, acting commissioner of CBP, said in the statement.
The seven-day average Miller refers to is the number of individuals encountered each day along the border outside of official ports of entry and at ports of entry without a CBP appointment. This figure, key in the immigration rule released in June, has decreased to 1,900 encounters per day. There were clear downward movements among all demographic groups: encounters with unaccompanied minors decreased by 14%, with single adults by 28% and with family units by 36%.
Until Biden implemented his new policy, illegal crossings amounted to about 4,000 per day, according to figures from the Department of Homeland Security. Since the beginning of June, following the measure announced by the president, asylum processes can be suspended if the number of illegal crossings in the last seven days exceeds 2,500, and resumed when they are below 1,500, a number, according to them, manageable so that the authorities can process the applicants. Since, despite the decrease, the average has not sunk below the figure established until now, the processing of new asylum applications remains halted.
Under the immigration order, therefore, most migrants detected outside of ports of entry are not processed for asylum, and may be subject to rapid expulsion to Mexico, expedited deportations to their home countries, as well as criminal and administrative consequences, such as a minimum five-year reentry ban. In remarks made when the measure was announced, Undersecretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Núñez-Neto put it bluntly: “The changes in how we are going to process people are going to result in the almost immediate expulsion of the vast majority of people found at the border,” he insisted.
She added that there are exceptions to these policies, especially for children, medical emergencies, trafficking victims or people whose lives are at risk. Also, if an appointment is scheduled in advance through the CPB One app, a process and platform that the administration defends but has been widely criticized, legal entry may be granted. In June, CBP processed more than 41,800 people through appointments at ports of entry using the app.
As expected, the Democratic administration, under strong political pressure to stop the flow across the border, claims that the decrease in illegal crossings is due to Biden’s measure. Already in the presidential debate on June 27, during which the issue of migration was central, the president boasted that, after the change in his immigration laws, 40% fewer people were crossing the border illegally. The figure turned out to be 10% lower.
But other factors may also be at play. U.S. officials told NBC News earlier this week that the decline is also due to high temperatures in the summer months, which have consistently exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), and the role Mexican authorities have played in stemming the flow of migrants. In recent months, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has cracked down on deportations from the south of his country and taken other steps to stop, or at least slow, waves of migrants crossing Mexico on foot, by train, bus or through airports.
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