Record Apprehensions and Suspected Terrorist Arrests Made for a Disastrous December at the Southwest Border
The release of December 2022’s border encounter numbers brings an inglorious end to America’s worst year for illegal immigration ever. 251,487 people were encountered at the Southwest border in December alone, the first time the monthly figure has ever passed a quarter-million. That number does not include “gotaways” (individuals noticed by law enforcement but not apprehended), who according to CBP sources account for close to 100,000 additional illegal entries every month. This highest-ever figure is the tenth consecutive month of more than 200,000 crossings on the Southwest border, and the Biden administration has only made efforts to conceal or move around the unsustainable numbers of illegals entering our country rather than address the crisis.
Even more troubling, only around one-fifth of December’s record total were expelled under Title 42 authority. The remainder, over 200,000 people, were allowed to be processed and the vast majority likely released into American communities as yet another abuse of “humanitarian parole.”
In addition to the sheer volume of illegal migrants, the latest data provide other reasons for concern. Among the individuals encountered at the border were 17 flagged by the Department of Justice’s Terrorist Screening Database. The total of 38 individuals on this database encountered since October 1, the beginning of this fiscal year, compares to 26 individuals encountered from this list in all of Fiscal Years 2017 through 2021. The engineered breakdown of our border security poses a direct terror threat to American citizens.
Incredibly, Biden administration officials are attempting to spin these horrific numbers as proof that their policies are working. Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller defended the almost-certainly illegal “parole programs” the administration has created for several nationalities, stating that they have reduced the numbers of those nationalities showing up at the border in the weeks since December.
Allowing 360,000 people to fly to the United States every year and be let in without a visa will only incentivize other nationality groups to flood across the border. As the monthly numbers of Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Peruvians at the border rocketed past 10,000 each in December, the administration’s “parole program” inevitably seems set for even further expansion with American citizens paying the price.
Under President Biden’s failed leadership, the situation at the border continues to spiral. Illegal programs that allow “parolees” mass visa-free entry into the country and the workforce amount to nothing more than giveaways to illegal aliens, not solutions to this crisis. Executive actions by the administration cannot be allowed to subvert the lawful immigration system entirely. This situation will not improve until real enforcement action, not creative accounting, is put into place at our borders.