The Department of Homeland Security expects to see the lowest number of illegal immigrants arrested at the U.S.-Mexico boundary in January versus any month over the past two years, a remarkable turnaround just as House Republicans are eyeing impeachment for President Joe Biden’s top border official.
The number of immigrants from four countries whose citizens have been among the most commonly apprehended at the border under President Joe Biden’s tenure — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela — is on track to drop 97% this month compared to December, the DHS said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
A Washington Examiner analysis of last month’s data revealed that 87,138 immigrants from those four countries were apprehended in December. A 97% drop would mean just 2,600 immigrant apprehensions in January. Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela arrivals made up more than one-third of the 220,000 total apprehensions last month.
“These expanded border enforcement measures are working,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. Mayorkas is already the subject of articles of impeachment under the new GOP House majority.
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The DHS said on an average day in mid-December, Border Patrol agents took custody of 3,367 immigrants daily, compared to 115 apprehensions on Tuesday. However, the department did not reveal how many immigrants from Central America, Mexico, and more than 150 other countries whose citizens have been encountered at the border over the past year have changed.
The decline comes after the Biden administration announced earlier this month that any immigrant seeking admission from those four countries would not be released into the United States if they crossed the border illegally.
Instead, immigrants would have to apply from outside the U.S. to be prescreened by a U.S. official in order to be considered for the government’s new “parole” process, which allows the individual to reside in the U.S. without necessarily having to make an asylum claim, as hundreds of thousands of immigrants who illegally crossed have already been paroled over the past two years.
The government will allow 120,000 people from these four countries into the U.S. each month under this new parole program, far more than the 87,138 who were encountered — most of whom were released into the U.S. because the governments in those nations will not accept back its citizens from the U.S.
On Tuesday, Texas and the American First Legal group led a 20-state lawsuit against DHS on the basis that the parole change was illegal because it circumvented Congress, the only body allowed to determine immigration levels, according to the Constitution.
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Mayorkas slammed the Republican states’ effort to shut down the program given its success in lowering illegal immigration levels.
“It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border,” Mayorkas said in his Wednesday statement.
