Border Collapse Goes Far Beyond CBP ‘Encounters’

Defying deadly summer heat, illegal aliens are arriving at America’s southwestern border in historic numbers. While the 210,000 Border Patrol “encounters” reported in July include some duplication of migrants who attempted multiple crossings, it is a low-ball figure that does not account for tens of thousands who got through.

A model developed by Yale and MIT researchers estimates that only 68 percent of illegal border crossers are actually apprehended. On top of the 1.8 million projected encounters for this fiscal year (ending Sept. 30), the researchers calculate that an additional 576,000 migrants will successfully enter the U.S. 

That figure represents a population comparable to the state of Wyoming. But the actual total is far bigger because virtually every unaccompanied minor and family unit “encounter” is automatically admitted into the country. Currently, an average of 616 unaccompanied children and 2,583 family units come across the border every day, more than one-third of them through Texas’s Rio Grande Sector.

Plus, as FAIR detailed last month, official encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) do not necessarily mean apprehensions, and apprehensions do not always result in removals. Unsurprisingly, few of the illegal aliens caught and released at the border on promises of reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ever do.

“The July numbers … show that the border crisis is going from record high to record high,” writes the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman, who spent much of the summer on the border and points south. “[It’s] an upward climb into a red-zone crisis that will defy any control, short of a radical about-face by the Biden administration.”

No such turnaround is in sight, as there were more illegal alien encounters this July than in the previous four Julys combined.

With seasonal migrant traffic typically rising as temperatures fall during the autumn months, this administration refuses to take necessary measures to stop, or even slow, the record-breaking run on the border. Such is the Biden Effect.