185,503 illegal immigrants were encountered attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in July – a 27 percent increase in crossings from last month
WASHINGTON – Today, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released the following statement on the July border encounters:
“In a Friday afternoon news dump, just as Biden is about to jet off for another week-long vacation, the Biden administration announced that over 183,000 illegal immigrants were encountered crossing the border last month. Biden created this humanitarian crisis at the border, letting cartels thrive and leaving our communities less safe, yet he refuses to take any responsibility for his failures.”
Background:
- New data shows 183,503 illegal immigrants were encountered attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in July – a 27 percent increase in crossings from last month.
- For 29 straight months, monthly encounters have been higher than even the highest month seen under the previous administration.
- With roughly 5,900 daily encounters, this dwarfs the definition of a "crisis" set by Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson when he said in 2019 that "more than 1,000" encounters a day "overwhelms the system."
- July’s 180,000-plus encounters is a 290 percent increase from the average number of July encounters from 2017-2020.
- 10,648 unaccompanied children were encountered.
- 77,458 illegal immigrants were encountered from countries outside the Northern Triangle and Mexico, showing that Biden's crisis is global.
- At least 146 people on the terror watchlist have been encountered trying to enter the U.S. between ports of entry so far this fiscal year – breaking the all-time record of 98 set last year.
- This includes the nearly 5.8 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered and the more than 1.4 million gotaways that have escaped past Border Patrol into the U.S.
- Border officials say that the official number of gotaways vastly undercounts the illegal immigrants who make it into the U.S.
- 1,756 pounds of deadly fentanyl and 5,168 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in July alone, with much more getting through.
- Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: "If they're divide seizing a lot, it's because a lot is coming in."
- The amount of fentanyl seized in July is the equivalent of more than 398 million lethal doses.
- Since Biden took office, more than 22 tons of fentanyl have crossed the southern border, enough to kill 10 billion people.
- More than 7.2 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since Biden took office.
- Illicit drugs are flowing into the country at an alarming rate, with only 5 to 10 percent being intercepted as border officials struggle to contain the smuggling.
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