Encounters by Customs and Border Protection officials with illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border surged to another record in December.
A CBP source told Newsmax on Monday that there were about 302,000 encounters at the southern border in December, surpassing the record for a month of 269,735 in September. The official data likely will be released publicly by the agency later this month.
Total encounters, including the northern and coastal borders, are on pace to exceed a record 340,000 to 350,000, the source said.
Republicans blame the migrant surge on the Biden administration's unwillingness to enforce immigration laws, with President Joe Biden undoing many of former President Donald Trump's successful border policies.
Total encounters at the southern border for December exceed the total for the first nine months of Trump's presidency (227,078), which were also the final nine months of the 2017 fiscal year, according to CBP data.
In the first three months of the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October, there have been approximately 785,404 encounters at the southern border, according to CBP data. That's higher than all but one fiscal year of Trump's presidency; in fiscal year 2019, there were 977,509 encounters.
More than 8 million illegal immigrants have reportedly flooded into the U.S. during Biden's presidency. Only in his first month in office have the total encounters been lower than 100,000, according to CBP data.
It has forced Texas and other border states overwhelmed by the surge to send the migrants to Democrat-led cities that have been declared sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.
But even the mayors of those cities are starting to complain to the Biden administration regarding the migrant surge.
"New York City has begun to see another surge of migrants arriving, and we expect this to intensify over the coming days as a result of [Republican] Texas Gov. [Greg] Abbott's cruel and inhumane politics," Democrat New York Mayor Eric Adams said last week. "For many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point and can no longer do that."
Said Democrat Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson last week: "We have reached a critical point in this mission that, absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies were not designed and built to respond to. We are literally building the system as we go along."
But Mark Morgan, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner in the Trump administration, told Newsmax on Saturday that system should not be in place.
"Our border security right now is not a red or blue issue: It's a red, white, and blue issue," Morgan said. "And I'm still in this fight to bring awareness and intention to American people on that question."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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