U.S. Customs and Border Protection released the numbers for illegal alien encounters at the southern border during December, which totaled 302,034 total encounters—the highest ever recorded in a month.
This is nearly 60,000 total encounters more than the month of November, during which Border Patrol recorded 242,418 total encounters.
This is yet another instance of illegal alien encounters breaking the record for highest number of encounters at the southern border, having previously done so in September of last year.
According to Fox News Correspondent Bill Melugin, “There have now been over 785,000 migrant encounters at the southern border since October 1st, the highest first quarter ever recorded. That’s a population size bigger than the city of Seattle coming across the border in just 3 months.”
Texas Scorecard reached out to CBP in an attempt to find out why they waited almost an entire month before releasing the numbers, but has not received a response.
Friday’s report also states that “Consistent with historical trends and enhanced enforcement, the first two weeks of January saw an over 50% decrease in southwest border encounters between ports of entry according to preliminary figures.”
However, while the CBP report claims that the number of border encounters at ports of entry have decreased, Senior Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies Todd Bensman argued back in June that these figures are part of the Biden administration’s “untruthful narrative” about illegal border crossings.
In an article for The Federalist, Bensman argued that the current administration is funneling would-be border jumpers into the United States via use of a mobile app called CBP One.
“This historically expanded program allows those who intended to cross illegally between land ports of entry to now be funneled through them and thus not be counted in the politically problematic monthly ‘illegal crossings’ category,” he wrote.
In addition to hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings, Border Patrol arrested 19 individuals that are on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist in December, bringing the total number of terror watchlist suspects arrested at the southern border to 49.
