After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.
From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.
Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.
There has also been a substantial increase in the number of illegals coming from countries other than the more common, and geographically closer, sources of most illegal immigration: Mexico, and the “Northern Triangle” of three countries consisting of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. There has been a rise in illegals coming from more distant countries such as Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, and Venezuela, potentially constituting more than 50,000 total just this year alone. In 2018, there were fewer than 40,000 total illegals from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle for the entire year.
The border crisis remains one of the major areas in which Biden has continued to face overwhelming criticism, with his administration widely being viewed as either incapable of, or unwilling to, properly handle the crisis due to his campaign promises. While running for president in 2020, Biden vowed to reverse President Trump’s stricter immigration approach, and instead offer many taxpayer-funded handouts to illegals, such as free healthcare and free education. He has since designated his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the figurehead of the border crisis, though Harris has still not paid a visit to the border once since taking office.