President Joe Biden’s executive order to control the southern border does not appear to have affected the flow of illegal immigration into the country so far, according to sector reports, leaked data, and local officials.
Biden’s executive order on the U.S.-Mexico border, which officially went into effect last Wednesday, pauses new asylum requests once the number of average border encounters exceeds 2,500 a day over a week-long time period, resuming when the seven-day daily average drops to 1,500. However, there are no signs so far that the order is stemming the tide of foreign nationals crossing the border between ports of entry.
There were nearly 4,000 migrants apprehended on Wednesday, the first full day of Biden’s order went into effect, according to data obtained by NewsNation. Similar numbers were reported for the following days that week with encounters spiking to 10,000 on Saturday, NewsNation reported, further indicating that Biden’s order has done little to decrease the number of migrants from crossing illegally through the U.S.-Mexico border.
John Modlin, the chief patrol agent of Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, reported 7,500 total apprehensions in his sector for the first week of June. This number is virtually unchanged from the 7,800 apprehensions that took place in the last week of May, and higher than the three other weeks that month.
“Biden’s executive order is a facade, offering the illusion of security while doing nothing to address the real issues at our borders,” Jim Desmond, a San Diego county supervisor, said on Monday. “This past weekend alone, thousands of individuals entered San Diego County, exacerbating the alarming number of over 151,000 street releases this fiscal year.”
There were around 5,600 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters on Wednesday, including the 4,000 illegal crossings and CBP One App releases at ports of entry, according to sources that spoke with Fox News. There were roughly 10,000 foreign nationals in Border Patrol custody on Thursday, a number four times the limit set by Biden’s order, according to data leaked to the New York Post.
“None whatsoever,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday when asked by Fox News Host Maria Bartiromo if there was any discernible change at the border since the White House issued its executive order. “Listen, people need to understand that what Biden has done, he’s not doing anything to actually secure the border.”
“In fact, it’s the opposite because he’s actually authorizing more people to cross the border illegally. And think about this: when you get to that 2,500 number of people crossing the border a day that he says he will allow, but only then stop the asylum process, when he stops the asylum process, there’s nothing that Biden is doing that actually is preventing anybody else from crossing the border,” Abbott continued.
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was questioned on whether he expected numbers to drop below 1,500 daily average of migrant encounters in the coming months. Mayorkas said the Biden administration was “driving” toward that goal.
“It would be very hard to call that a success,” host Martha Raddatz said after playing a 2021 clip of Mayorkas claiming “we will succeed” when discussing the administration’s plan to control the southern border. Since that time, around 6.5 million migrants have been apprehended along the border.
Neither Customs and Border Protections nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
