CBP Releases September Monthly Update - Highest Ever Number of Illegal Border Crossings

AP Photo/Eric Gay

It is no coincidence that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released its monthly report on a Saturday morning at the end of the month. The numbers for September 2023 are at a historical high. The number reported for the month of September is 269,735.

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The Biden administration doesn’t want this report to get much play in the media. Lucky for them, most of the media is solidly loyal to Biden and working to make sure he wins re-election in 2024. Fox will report the story but other news outlets only report on the Biden border crisis when they cannot ignore it. Then it only lasts a matter of hours, maybe a day or two, and then the focus moves away from reporting from the southern border. I will hand it to FNC – they are reporting on the southern border every day.

Reporting on the southern border is important because it is both a humanitarian crisis and a national security crisis. A country without borders is not a sovereign country. The human suffering along the border by those who have been enticed to try to come and illegally cross into the United States is a humanitarian crisis. Biden thinks he looks like a hero for allowing a flood of illegal immigrants into border communities instead of enforcing immigration laws and securing the border. People are not being properly vetted. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are coming into the country every month without doing so through a legal port of entry. It is a miracle that something bad has not happened. There has been a record number of illegal immigrants apprehended who are on the terror watch list. Common sense tells us that many more were not apprehended. The number of gotaways – those who do not turn themselves in to Border Patrol – who run and disappear into the country are not vetted at all.

This is the government spin in the CBP report.

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“In response to high rates of encounters across the southwest border in September, CBP surged resources and personnel. We are continually engaging with domestic and foreign partners to address historic hemispheric migration, including large migrant groups traveling on freight trains, and to enforce consequences including by preparing for direct repatriations to Venezuela,” said Troy A. Miller, Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner. “CBP will continue to remain vigilant, making operational adjustments as necessary and enforcing consequences under U.S. immigration law. The supplemental funding request announced yesterday would provide critically needed additional resources including additional CBP agents and officers to support our essential missions: from border and migration management, to countering fentanyl and keeping dangerous drugs out of our communities.”

To be clear, the Biden border crisis is not due to any failures on the part of Border Patrol or law enforcement on the border. They are doing their jobs, as best as they can every day. The problem is that they are overwhelmed. This has been the problem since Biden took office and invited the world to cross our southern border. DHS ignores the Biden border crisis at every opportunity. Surging resources and personnel is happening now because the situation has gotten so critical that Governor Abbott is busing illegal aliens out of Texas and into sanctuary cities across the country. Sanctuary cities are run by Democrats. Claiming to be a sanctuary city where legal status doesn’t matter is all fun and virtue-signaling games until the illegal aliens actually show up and are in need of services. Suddenly the Biden border crisis is a real thing and the federal government is told to do its job. In other words, the border wasn’t a problem as long as the illegal aliens remained in Texas and other border states. Let the border states handle the crisis, right? Not any more. No mas.

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Apparently the plan was to link this disastrous monthly report to the supplemental funding request made by Biden on Friday. The request for domestic border security was for an amount far less than the amount of funding for Ukraine and Israel. Now that Team Biden is getting blowback from Democrats, and his polling numbers are in the basement (with him) on all issues, especially on managing border security, suddenly DHS wants you to believe it is budget hawks that are not willing to secure the border. These are not serious people – the Biden administration is filled with diversity hires who are not equipped to get the job done. It’s why the United States is in the mess it is in.

CBP took a page from Biden’s speeches and told those who are considering illegally entering the United States to not do it. “Don’t do it.”

CBP’s message for anyone who is thinking of entering the United States illegally along the southwest border is simple: don’t do it. When noncitizens cross the border unlawfully, they put their lives in peril. The U.S. Border Patrol has undertaken significant efforts in recent years to expand capacity to aid and rescue individuals in distress. To prevent the loss of life, CBP initiated a Missing Migrant Program in 2017 that locates noncitizens reported missing, rescues individuals in distress, and reunifies decedents’ remains with their families in the border region. In September 2023, the U.S. Border Patrol conducted 4,633 rescues, bringing the total number of rescues in FY 2023 from 32,690 at the end of August to 37,323 at the end of September. This significant rise in rescues – an increase of 44% compared with rescues in August (3,212) and an increase of 67% compared with rescues in July (2,776) – is a testament to CBP’s commitment to border security, despite the lies of smugglers who mislead migrants for their own financial gain.

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Not exactly a strong message, is it? I write about the Biden border crisis frequently. It’s important. I’ve never seen an American president so derelict in his responsibility to secure the homeland. He should have been impeached for that alone a long time ago. I keep saying these are historically high numbers and it is not sustainable. Yet, the next month it gets worse. This is Biden’s America. It is intentionally chaotic and lawless.

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