During Thursday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that President Biden “has done the work” to combat the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border since day one – even though the crisis began after Biden took offic
“President has done the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border since day one,” Jean-Pierre claimed. “What Americans should know is that the President put forth an immigration reform policy to make sure that we’re dealing with a broken system, to make sure that we’re able to protect dreamers to make sure that we deal with the backlog that we’re seeing with asylum seekers to fix the gutted system that was that has been around for some time, but certainly was guided by the last administration.”
Jean-Pierre comes after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported that border officials had encountered more than 230,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border in October – an all-time record for October. The data for November has not yet been released.
Additionally, data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows that border agents encountered a record 2,378,944 migrants attempting to illegally cross the U.S. border with Mexico in fiscal year 2022.
The record for 2022 dwarfs the previous record of 1,734,686 migrant encounters that was set in 2021 – Biden’s first year of office. To put that number into perspective, there were 458,088 migrant encounters in fiscal year 2020, so illegal immigration levels nearly quadrupled during Biden’s first year in office and have continued to increase since.
The illegal immigration spike was likely a result of Biden promising migrants during his 2020 presidential campaign that the U.S. would be a “safe haven” for them if he was elected. He then quickly dismantled border security policies after being elected, including shutting down border wall construction.
