24 Months Of Border Apprehensions Above 150,000

New February Border Numbers Debunk The Biden Administration’s Claims That Their Immigration Policies Are Working

BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS CONTINUES TO RAGE

• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows 154,998 illegal immigrants were apprehended attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in February, making this the second highest total for February in 22 years.
• For the first time in history, monthly apprehensions at the southern border have surpassed 150,000 for 24 consecutive months.
  • Under the previous administration, monthly apprehensions never reached 150,000.
• With roughly 5,500 encounters daily, 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" apprehensions a day "overwhelms the system."
• February's 154,000-plus encounters is a 257 percent increase from the average number of January apprehensions from 2017-2020.
  • 10,870 unaccompanied children were apprehended.
  • 60,933 illegal immigrants were apprehended from countries outside the Northern Triangle and Mexico, showing that Biden's crisis is global.
  • At least 69 people on the terror watchlist have been apprehended trying to enter the U.S. between ports of entry so far this fiscal year.
• More than 6.1 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since Biden took office.
  • This includes the 4.8 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection has apprehended and the 1.3 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. by up to 20 percent.
• Biden has installed a de facto amnesty program in which over 75,000 illegal immigrants have had their cases dismissed in court due to his administration's failure to file the proper paperwork.
• Homeland Security Investigations estimates that Mexican cartels are now making $13 billion a year smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S, 26 times what they made in 2018.
• When Biden and Mayorkas insist the border is "secure," they are lying; today, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz admitted that DHS does not have operational control of the border.

DRUGS ARE POURING OVER THE BORDER INTO OUR COMMUNITIES

• 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.
  • 2,282 pounds of deadly fentanyl and 10,333 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in February alone, with much more getting through.
  • Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: "If they're seizing a lot, it's because a lot is coming in."
  • The amount of fentanyl seized in February is the equivalent of more than 517 million lethal doses.
• Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45, with the number killed by the drug up 94 percent since 2019.
  • Of the record 107,000 fatal drug overdoses in 2021, two-thirds involved fentanyl; on average, one person in the U.S. now dies from a fentanyl overdose every seven minutes.
  • According to Biden's own DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, cartels are "killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we've never seen before."

BIDEN IGNORES THE SOUTHERN BORDER AS HIS HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE WORSENS

• Despite Biden's promise of a "fair and humane immigration system," his open border policies aren't compassionate; they are deadly.
• This weekend, officials recorded one of the deadliest U.S. maritime smuggling accidents in recent history off the coast of San Diego.
• Last month, two migrants were stoned to death and a third shot as they were about to climb the border barrier into San Diego.
  • The border has become a domain controlled by the cartels – "no one can go through there unless a payment has been made."
• Earlier this month, an illegal immigrant assaulted and injured a female Border Patrol agent in Cochise County, Arizona.
• Tens of thousands of migrant children who have come to the U.S. are being exploited and forced into de facto "indentured servitude."
  • Biden's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lost track of 85,000 children after responding to Biden's demands to "move the children quickly out of shelters" by rolling back important vetting and safeguard procedures.
• Criminals are flooding across the border, with Border Patrol arresting illegal immigrants accused of rape, sexual battery of a child, and homicide all within the past month.
• Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents have been left demoralized and "overwhelmed" by the Biden administration's handling of the crisis.

BIDEN AND DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS ARE TO BLAME FOR THE BORDER CRISIS

• Biden's failed policies have created the crisis at the southern border.
  • In Biden's first 100 days he took more than 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting construction of the border wall and ending the successful "Remain in Mexico" policy.
  • Illegal immigrants have confirmed this: "The border is open…everybody believes that the border is open. It's open because we enter. We come in, free, no problem…We came illegally."
  • Meanwhile, it was revealed that the Biden administration lost track of at least 150,000 illegal immigrants during the summer of 2021.
• It's not just Biden; Democrats in Congress have consistently voted for policies that make the border and country less secure.
  • Democrats aided sanctuary cities and sent stimulus checks to illegal immigrants, opposed legislation to fund Title 42, and repeatedly voted against funding the border wall.
  • Democrats voted against hiring more border agents, deporting felons, preventing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes from becoming permanent residents — and voted against strengthening the successful Remain in Mexico policy.
  • Democrats voted against funding for counternarcotic operations and ensuring the enforcement of immigration laws at the border.
  • Democrats voted against ensuring all local and state law enforcement are permitted to cooperate with federal immigration officials to track illegal immigrants.
• A recent Gallup poll found that just 33 percent of Americans approve of how Biden is handling immigration.