(Texas Scorecard) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced the number of southwest border encounters for September, wrapping up the 2024 federal fiscal year.
September saw the lowest number of encounters since February of 2021—a month into the Biden-Harris administration’s tenure—at 101,790.
Fiscal Year 2024 ended at 2,135,005 encounters, the lowest since 2021 and believed to be a result of a deal made last December between the Biden-Harris administration and Mexico to slow traffic to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Todd Bensman, senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, posited that the deal was made to improve optics for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign. Immigration has polled as a key issue for American voters amid the border crisis.
Since February of 2021, there have been 8,427,854 encounters at the southwest border.
However, an additional 1.38 million foreign nationals have been allowed to enter the country through the CBP One app or CHNV parole program in the past two years. That number is not counted in the official tally of encounters, since these controversial programs created by the Biden-Harris administration are currently legal pathways into the country.
The Trump presidency saw a little more than a fourth of that number at 2,437,856 between 2017-2021.
Wade Miller, executive director for the Center for Renewing America, highlighted that “The Biden/Harris September border report shows that border encounters are still over 2.3x higher than Trump’s monthly encounters average.”
He concluded, “The border is still on fire under their watch.”
Republicans have repeatedly blamed the border crisis on the Biden-Harris administration’s decisions to repeal many of the Trump-era policies that slowed down illegal traffic, such as the Remain in Mexico policy.
While CBP’s September report will be the last official numbers to come out before the presidential election, sources at the border are already reporting an uptick in special interest aliens crossing in October. Some have suggested the surge is in anticipation of another Trump presidency.