Washington, D.C. (September 20, 2022) - CBP released its latest numbers this week on
Border Patrol apprehensions at the Southwest border for August, revealing that illegal entries continued at a blistering pace, during a time of year when they should be falling. Worse is the news that expulsions of illegal entrants under CDC orders issued pursuant to
Title 42 of the U.S. Code in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have fallen to their lowest level of the Biden administration.
Andrew Arthur, the Center’s visiting fellow in law and policy, said, “Expect the administration to trumpet these numbers as proof that it has ‘turned the corner’ on bringing control to the Southwest border. But, don’t believe it. When the only improvement in Biden’s performance at the border is compared to his own horrid track record, there are problems.”
A month before he was sworn in, in
December 2020, Biden vowed to "keep his pledge to roll back” what he termed “the Trump administration's restrictive asylum policies”, but cautioned that he would do so “at a slower pace than he initially promised, to avoid winding up with '2 million people on our border.'”
More than two weeks into September, apprehensions have already easily surpassed the two-million migrant mark President-elect Biden claimed he feared and these statistics do not include an estimated
half-million-plus “got-aways”, bringing the total to at least 2.5 million.
The sole Trump policy at the border that Biden kept in place was Title 42, which was actually a public-health, not a border, policy per se. In the
early spring, however, Biden announced that he would be ending those CDC expulsion orders, too, on May 23, only to be rebuffed in this effort by a federal district court judge who enjoined that decision on
May 20.
Even though that injunction remains in effect, the number of illegal entrants who were apprehended by Border Patrol and expelled under Title 42 has plummeted. In August, fewer than 40 percent of the total number of apprehended aliens were expelled under those CDC orders.
So much for respect for the federal judiciary.
Arthur said, “The November midterm congressional elections are just weeks away, and the president’s fellow Democrats likely wish the border would just go away. If Republicans can capture one or both chambers, (1) immigration will be a leading issue why, and (2) Biden will likely be forced to erect his promised “guardrails” on the border, whether he wants to or not.”
