White House reports drop in border encounters, credits executive actions

washington — 

The White House this week reported a important alteration successful migrant encounters astatine the U.S.-Mexico borderline since President Joe Biden issued an enforcement bid aimed astatine bolstering migration enforcement.

Migrant encounters successful August were importantly little than past year, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández wrote successful a connection Monday. Since Biden's June 4 enforcement bid determination has been a 50% driblet successful encounters astatine the border.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, successful August determination were astir 58,000 migrant encounters betwixt ports of introduction on the confederate border, astir a 68% diminution from the 181,000 successful August 2023.

The full fig of confederate borderline encounters was astir 63,000. That fig includes astir 5,000 migrants who came to ports of introduction without a CBP One registration.

CBP One is simply a mobile app that allows migrants to docket appointments astatine ports of introduction alternatively than transverse illegally. U.S. borderline officials said the app has played a important relation successful streamlining borderline processes. In August, astir 44,700 individuals were processed utilizing CBP One. Since its instauration successful January 2023, much than 813,000 radical person scheduled appointments.

U.S. borderline officials besides said the June enforcement actions led to an summation successful migrant removals, with much than 131,000 radical deported to implicit 140 countries since June. About 400 planetary repatriation flights person taken spot during this time.

But adjacent with the latest numbers, immoderate Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden medication during a proceeding Thursday to sermon imaginable violent threats and homeland information issues related to amerciable immigration.

The lawmakers argued that the cognition of borderline officers arsenic welcoming, alternatively than focused connected instrumentality enforcement, is contributing to the fig of migrants coming to the U.S.

"Our borderline patrol, instrumentality enforcement agents were transitioned from their nationalist information role, their instrumentality enforcement relation [of] repelling amerciable introduction and capturing those that crossed illegally arsenic overmuch arsenic imaginable to modulation to benignant of reception roles and caring for and transporting, feeding, etc.," Congressman Clay Higgins, a Republican from Alabama, said arsenic helium expressed interest astir migrants who crossed illegally and evaded Border Patrol.

There is nary denotation the Biden medication officially changed borderline patrol officers' instrumentality enforcement role.

Alex Nowrasteh, the vice president for economical and societal argumentation studies astatine the Cato Institute, testified during the proceeding that the superior crushed migrants travel the U.S. — legally oregon illegally — is to work.

"It's inactive the economy. That's what's pulling radical in, and the accelerated economical betterment aft COVID tin explicate much than immoderate different factor," helium said.