We are more than halfway into May and yet U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hasn’t updated its Southwest Land Border Encounters page with April’s figures — despite this data being readily available. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has utilized this delay tactic throughout the Biden administration in an effort to hide the full extent of its border crisis from the American people.
So how do I know April’s figures are record-setting bad? Thanks to a court-mandated monthly filing in Texas v. Biden, we learn that CBP “encountered” (read: arrested or apprehended) 234,088 illegal aliens at the Southwest border last month, a roughly 6 percent increase over March’s 221,303 encounters, which at the time was the worst month ever recorded. To put these numbers into perspective, we now have consecutive months setting the all-time border apprehension record and four total months above the 200,000 threshold already in the Biden administration’s first 16 months (the others being July (213,593) and August (209,840) in 2021). Prior to the Biden administration, border apprehensions last exceeded 200,000 in March 2000 (220,063), a time that precedes the creation of DHS.
As a reminder, Texas is a lawsuit brought by the states of Texas and Missouri in April 2021 challenging the Biden administration’s termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, or “Remain in Mexico”). Federal district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk enjoined Secretary Mayorkas's termination of MPP and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the injunction. The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court and Andrew Arthur has called it the "Most Significant Immigration Case — Ever".
