- Biden administration boasts lowest crossings since September 2020
The Biden administration released the latest border crossing numbers Friday night, showing a 32% drop in migrants apprehended by Border Patrol in July, which the feds are calling the “lowest number since September 2020.”
The staggering decline in migrant crossings comes four years after the worst border crisis the United States has ever seen, with record numbers of migrants arriving at the country’s borders seeking entry, including large numbers of asylum seekers.
Since October 2021, more than 10 million migrants have crossed into the United States, according to federal statistics, straining federal agencies that handle migrants and bringing border communities like El Paso, Texas, to their knees.
Texas’ sixth-largest city operated under a state of emergency for more than a year as 2,400 migrants crossed there per day at the peak; at one point, it started its own charter bus program to get migrants off its streets and into the cities they actually wanted to go to, like New York and Chicago.
Two repressive measures are responsible for the change, border expert Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America told DailyMail.com.
The border is quiet near El Paso, Texas, as migrant crossings plummet in recent weeks
“It’s a combination: Mexico makes it harder to cross Mexico and the United States makes it harder to get asylum if you cross ‘the wrong way,'” he explained.
Since January, the Mexican government has stepped up efforts to stop migrants, mostly South and Central Americans, passing through its country on their way to the United States.
Under pressure from the Biden administration, Mexican officials have set up checkpoints to find migrants on buses and trains heading north and return them to the international border between Mexico and Guatemala.
In June, the The White House announced changes How migrants could apply for asylum at the border.
Any migrant who did not enter the United States legally would be expelled and not allowed to apply for asylum.
The migrants crossed the Rio Grande near El Paso in 2022 on their way to turn themselves in to U.S. border control and request asylum.
Until then, even those who crossed the border illegally could simply find a Border Patrol agent and turn themselves in, asking to start an asylum case.
Biden’s shift on asylum has had a real impact on the ground: reducing border crossings in El Paso from about 1,000 per day before the announcement to just 398 per day now, Border Patrol officials shared.
The West Texas city has gone from seeing large numbers of so-called “renunciators” — migrants who crossed the border only to turn themselves in and ask for asylum — to more traditional trafficking: migrants who sneak in and try to evade Border Patrol altogether.
Now migrants seeking to file asylum claims are forced to wait in Mexico until they can secure a CBP One appointment at a U.S. port of entry, the “legal way” to enter the country.
However, with only 1,450 appointments available per day, the coveted appointments often take weeks or months to secure, assuming the migrants are not kidnapped or killed in the process.
Migrants speak with a border agent near El Paso on December 16, 2022
A migrant from Michoacan, Mexico, uses the CBPOne app on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, in Tijuana, Mexico.
Mexican border towns where migrants wait for asylum appointments have become hotbeds of brutality for migrants, who are easy targets for gangs who hold them for ransom, sell them into sexual slavery or kill them.
However, Biden’s asylum rule is already facing lawsuits from organizations like the ACLU and other groups, which is why Isacson believes it took so long for the president to enact it.
“This is actually a rule of dubious legality: the ability to prohibit asylum between ports of entry contradicts section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says you can apply for asylum whether you have entered at a port of entry or not,” he explained.