Customs and Border Protection data shows that President Biden oversaw a crisis of illegal immigration that dwarfed anything seen under former President Trump, despite recent fanfare about Biden's border policies.
Members of the Biden administration have touted the relatively low number of border apprehensions in June, but CBP data shows that illegal immigration spiked massively after Biden's inauguration in January 2021, and it has not dropped since.
When former President Trump entered office in 2016 after centering his campaign on high levels of illegal immigration, the CBP recorded 408,870 crossings for the fiscal year. That number would remain relatively stable throughout his term, dropping to 303,916 in FY 2017 before rising again to 396,579 in FY 2018.
His administration did see a large spike in 2019, however, more than doubling to 851,508 before once again returning to 400,651 in 2020.
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While the Trump administration struggled to stem the flow of illegal immigration, their numbers are dwarfed by the tsunami of migrants that began crashing over the border just one month after Biden was inaugurated, data shows.
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Month-by-month CBP records from 2021 show border apprehensions stable in the low 70,000s from October through January. February's data shows a jump to 101,099 and then March rocketed to 173,277. By July, CBP agents were apprehending over 200,000 migrants a month — a figure that would become the new normal for much of Biden's administration.
All told, border crossings spiked to 1,734,686 in Biden's first year in office, more than quadrupling the previous year and more than doubling the worst year on Trump's record. It did not stop there.
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Border apprehensions continued to rise, hitting 2.4 million in 2022 and 2.5 million in 2023. The CBP is on track to hit a similar number for 2024, having already made 1.8 million apprehensions with three months remaining in the fiscal year.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other Biden-Harris officials have pointed to June's relatively low 130,419 apprehensions as evidence of success. Biden took action to halt asylum processing in early June, and the effort was hailed by his allies.
"The president announced new decisive executive orders to secure the border. Unlawful crossings have dropped by more than 50 percent. And that’s the president acting without Congress — by 50 percent. They are now lower at this point than they were in 2019 and lower than when the former president left office," Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing last week.
While the comparison of June 2024 to June 2019 is technically correct, it is misleading considering the total for 2024 has already eclipsed that of 2019 two times over.
Her comparison to Trump's exit is misleading as well, as June 2024's total is only lower than March 2021, the month that crossings first spiked to over 170,000.
Trump's vice presidential pick, JD Vance, slammed the Biden-Harris administration for its border policies during his visit to Arizona on Thursday. He mocked Harris' colloquial title of "border czar" and vowed change if he and Trump are elected.
"It’s unbelievable what we’re letting happen at the southern border, and it’s because Kamala Harris refuses to do her job," Vance said. "You’ve got to stop catch-and-release, you’ve got to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated, and you’ve got to finish this border wall and reimplement deportations."
"If people could come into this country, and they know they’re never going to be deported, you effectively have an open border. That’s what Kamala Harris promised. That’s what Kamala Harris did," he added.
