Approximately 212,672 people were encountered trying to cross the southern border illegally in July, the most seen in more than 21 years and nearly three times as many as in January, when President Joe Biden took office, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday.
“We are encountering an unprecedented number of migrants in between the ports of entry at our southern border,” Mayorkas said during a press conference in Brownsville, Texas, before downplaying the continued rise each month. “We have seen the surges in migration before. We’ve seen them in the past, and migration surges are not new.”
The 212,672 people encountered at the southern border included those who tried to get in by coming across between land crossings, as well as those who were denied entry at border crossings, according to Customs and Border Protection. Roughly half of all encounters in July were of single adults.
The number of noncitizens encountered by law enforcement has climbed for the past 16 months, but it has risen at a faster rate in the past six months after Biden and Mayorkas walked back a number of Trump administration policies.
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Over the past decade, about 30,000 to 50,000 people have historically been encountered at the border every month. The last time that many people were seen on the border was March 2000, according to federal data.
Encounters stood at 74,000 in December 2020, weeks before Biden took office. They surpassed 172,000 in March and 178,000 in April as Biden eased border policies. Border Patrol made 180,000 encounters in June and 188,000 in July.
Biden initially explained the uptick in illegal migration this spring as “seasonal,” but the numbers have continued to spike this summer, when fewer migrants have historically been apprehended at the border because the hot temperatures act as a deterrent.
Incoming Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told reporters at the press conference that South Texas is seeing 60% of known illegal crossings.
“When I was a young agent back in 1996, Brownsville was the busiest place in the country. And we have managed to turn that around,” said Ortiz. “We will do the same thing with this current migration that we’re experiencing.”
Mayorkas touted the Biden administration’s four-prong plan to stem the flow of migrants illegally entering the country: addressing root causes that lead people to leave their home countries, rebuilding the asylum process, improving border security management, and taking down smugglers.
Chad Wolf, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and the former acting DHS secretary, blamed Biden for rescinding Trump-era policies and prompting the influx of migrants.
“The Obama administration famously believed 1,000 apprehensions a day constituted a crisis, and we’ve now hit seven times that number,” Wolf said in a statement. “This administration must be held accountable for its failed border strategy, and Congress must reject amnesty as part of the infrastructure debate currently raging in the House and Senate.”
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Under the Biden administration, most families and all children who are from countries other than Mexico are released into the United States and will avoid court proceedings for years due to a backlog of cases that exceeds 1 million.
