A Border Patrol agent searches a tunnel near Nogales, Arizona. Such tunnels are used to transport drugs under the U.S. border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

They equate to more than the individual populations of 45 U.S. states

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released monthly border apprehension data on Friday, saying, “statistics show lowest southwest border encounters in nearly four years.” CBP also claimed illegal border crossings were down by 34% from June to July and the drop is due to a presidential proclamation issued in June.

Troy Miller, a senior official performing the duties of the CBP Commissioner, said  recent Biden-Harris policies led “to the lowest number of encounters along the southwest border in more than three years.”

Despite these claims, the total number of apprehended illegal border crossers surpassed 10.5 million in July with two months left in the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

That number excludes 2 million gotaways, those who illegally entered and evaded capture, bringing the total number to more than 12.5 million.

That is greater than the individual populations of 45 states. If illegal border crossers were a state, they’d be the sixth most populous state ahead of Illinois.

That’s up from illegal border crossers totaling more than the individual populations of 43 states in March, up from 23 states in June 2022, when The Center Square first began making the comparison to state, county and country populations.

No other presidential administration in U.S. history has ever reported even a fraction of 12.5 million in one term let alone multiple terms combined.

The total number of apprehended illegal border crossers since fiscal 2021 was 10,522,029, excluding the two million gotaways. Illinois’ population is an estimated 12,516,863.

As The Center Square has reported every month since early 2021, after President Joe Biden took office, the number of illegal border crossers increased. The publicly reported CBP apprehension data excludes gotaways, the tens of thousands identified as “inadmissible” released into the country through a CBP One phone app every month, and the tens of thousands released through parole programs created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. More than a dozen of the programs were identified as illegal by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and used as evidence to impeach Mayorkas in February.

The CBP apprehension data total also excludes the hundreds of thousands brought in through parole programs from eight specific countries, including after the administration opened processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala to facilitate entry to the U.S.

“Despite the false narrative they’re attempting to project, the unprecedented border crisis the president and his ‘border czar’ have created continues to rage on,” U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said. “This administration is orchestrating a massive shell game, encouraging otherwise-inadmissible aliens to cross at ports of entry instead of between them – thereby creating a façade of improved optics for the administration, but in reality imposing a growing burden on our communities.”

“Total encounters at our ports – land, sea, and air – are up exponentially this fiscal year compared to the Biden-Harris administration’s first year in office, and are on track to surpass last year’s total,” Green added. “Since January 2023, more than 1.28 million inadmissible aliens have been granted entry to our country at official ports of entry through just the CBP One and CHNV mass-parole programs Biden and Harris created.”

Green said Biden-Harris border policies “have done damage that will take decades to remedy. And for the families of Americans like Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray, that damage will never be undone,” referring to two women and a 12-year-old girl who were murdered by criminal foreign nationals released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Nationwide encounters show that 2,597,784 illegal foreign nationals have been apprehended this fiscal year, after 3.2 million were in fiscal 2023, the highest number on record. In fiscal 2022, over 2.7 million were apprehended, breaking records at the time, after nearly 2 million were apprehended in fiscal 2021, the first historic record.

The majority apprehended every year are single adults.

Southwest border encounters show 1,925,773 illegal border crossers were apprehended this fiscal year through July, after a record nearly 2.5 million were in fiscal 2023. That is after nearly 2.4 million were apprehended in fiscal 2022 and over 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, both records.

The benchmark for records is the unprecedented number apprehended at the northern border – the highest by far under this administration than any other in recorded history.

This fiscal year, 162,865 illegal border crossers were apprehended at the northern border. That’s after a record nearly 190,000 were apprehended in fiscal 2023, and nearly 110,000 in fiscal 2022. Both were record setters and a massive increase from 27,000 in fiscal 2021.