Migrant Encounters at the Border Hit Lowest Number in Four Years

On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released an update that one would think would please Republicans decrying a Joe Biden-made “border crisis.” The number of migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border in July was the lowest in almost four years. Last month, CBP apprehended 56,408 migrants along the border, a 32 percent decline in comparison to June and the lowest since September 2020. It marked the fifth consecutive monthly drop, according to CBS News.

The decrease in migrant crossings follows the implementation of a border crackdown policy by the Biden administration. In June, the White House announced a sweeping executive order, based on an authority previously invoked by the Trump administration, allowing border officials to temporarily suspend some asylum processing and swiftly return certain migrants to neighboring Mexico and their countries of origin at times when crossings reach a certain threshold. 

Since June, the CBP announcement states, the agency has removed or returned more than 92,000 people to 130 countries, including via at least 300 deportation flights. “July’s total numbers between ports of entry are also lower than July 2019,” the agency says, “and lower than the monthly average for all of 2019, the last comparable year prior to the pandemic.” Increased enforcement by the Mexican government also explains the lower numbers.

But these record-breaking statistics have not deterred Republicans from advancing their narrative of a “Biden border crisis” or trying to blame Vice President Kamala Harris for it. In response to the newly released CBP numbers, Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, issued a statement saying, “the unprecedented border crisis the president and his ‘border czar’ have created continues to rage on.” As I previously explained here, Harris, now the Democratic nominee, was never appointed “Border Czar” or put in charge of managing migration:

As vice president, Harris was tasked with attacking the “root causes” of migration from Central America to the United States. Those drivers are not only complex, but long-standing—and deeply tied to America’s Cold War politics and imperialism. Harris had the (potentially impossible) job of trying to understand, and fix, over half a century of US meddling in the region—in addition to country-specific dynamics of that meddling—that has boomeranged into a migrant crisis.

Former Trump senior adviser and anti-immigration hardliner Stephen Miller took to X to distort the border numbers. “CBP just issued a press release admitting that Border Czar Harris has quietly smuggled nearly 1M illegals aliens into the US using a fast-pass entry phone app,” he claimed in reference to the 765,000 migrants the agency says have lawfully followed the Biden administration’s rules and sought appointments through the CBP One mobile app since January 2023.

If Republicans don’t want to buy into CBP data, perhaps they should look at another indication that the numbers at the border have been in decline. A recent investigation by NBC News found that fewer border crossings are having an impact on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program, which has transported thousands of migrants to cities across the country, from Denver to New York. Officials from cities that have previously received busloads of migrants from Texas told NBC News that they hadn’t gotten any buses since January.

While the Biden administration is claiming the border crossing slowdown as a win, migrants with legitimate asylum claims are being turned away at the border, potentially facing harm and danger as a result. Since the June executive order, which also released CBP agents from the mandate of asking migrants coming to the border if they had a reason to ask for asylum, referrals for “credible fear” interviews (a first step in the screening process) have fallen by 90 percent, according to the American Immigration Council.