During the same month President Joe Biden said his administration had the border crisis under control, Customs and Border Protection officials encountered a record number of illegal immigrants.
According to data released by CBP, there were 178,622 encounters between Border Patrol agents and illegal immigrants in April, up from the March record of 173,348. March’s total had been noted as the highest in the past 20 years.
The April figure represents a 944 percent increase from April 2020, when — as the coronavirus was putting its grip on North America — there were 17,106 encounters.
April’s total is barely 1,000 encounters less than the combined total for January and February.
In fact, for the first three full months of the Biden administration — February, March and April, there have been a total of 453,090 encounters between the Border Patrol and illegal immigrants. That total is more than double the total of 218,080 encounters for the final three full months of the Trump administration, October, November and December of last year.
The data showed that the largest group crossing the border was single adults.
The number of unaccompanied minors dipped from March, when the total was 18,733, to 16,933 in April.
Although the Biden administration has so far maintained the Trump-era policy of sending single adults back, it has admitted all unaccompanied children. That policy has led to vast overcrowding in border facilities.
“CBP continues to see a large influx of illegal migration along the Southwest Border,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement, according to Fox News.
During an April interview, Biden blamed the Trump administration for the border crisis, saying, “It’s way down now. We’ve now gotten control. For example, they didn’t plan for this, it comes every year, this flow.”
The Biden plan for dealing with the flood of unaccompanied children has been to have them housed in states that are far from the border.
That prompted a letter from 20 Republican governors addressed to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that argued that spreading the crisis around is not solving it.
“The cause of the border crisis is entirely due to reckless federal policy reversals executed within your first 100 days in office,” the letter stated. “The rhetoric of the Biden administration and the rollback of critical agreements with our allies have led to the inhumane treatment of tens of thousands of children and undermined a fragile immigration system.”
The governors were unhappy that the federal government is working with not-for-profits that house illegal immigrants with states having no say in the matter.
“Allowing the federal government to place a potentially unlimited number of unaccompanied migrant children into our states’ facilities for an unspecified length of time with almost zero transparency is unacceptable and unsustainable,” the letter stated. “We have neither the resources nor the obligation to solve the federal government’s problem and foot the bill for the consequences of this administration’s misguided actions.”
The letter was signed by the governors of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
