Fiscal Year 2023, which began on October 1, 2022, is scarcely five months old. Already, however, CBP officials are saying that encounters of illegal migrants crossing into the U.S. have exceeded one million.
Fox News is reporting that, as of Friday, a total of 1,008,217 illegals had been encountered at the border with Mexico; of those, less than a third (328,454) were expelled under Title 42. The total number thus far greatly exceeds the count at the same time last year, when “only” 839,819 had been encountered. The total for all of FY 2022 was 2.3 million, compared with 1.7 million in FY 2021. At the current rate, with more temperate migrating months to come, FY 2023’s total will eclipse those numbers.
But total encounters fall far short of the whole story of illegal entries. “Got-aways”–migrants who successfully cross into the U.S. without being intercepted–always constitute a large, nebulous percentage. The Border Patrol estimates that so far this FY there have been about 328,454 got-aways. In just five months, that’s well more than half the numbers estimated for last year (600,000).
As with its boasts regarding the slowing of overall price increases, the administration in a lame defense is playing with numbers, pointing to the fact that encounters in January (156,000) were well below those in December (251,000), while ignoring the reality that January’s numbers were still a record for that month.
Eventually, if Joe Biden has his way, everyone who wants to come to a wasted, bankrupt, crime-ridden America will have done so, and the numbers of migrants crossing the border will drop to zero. No doubt, the leftist loonies then in charge will declare victory.
For more, see Fox News.