Numbers released on Thursday show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 212,000 illegal immigrants in July.
This included about 19,000 unaccompanied minors. These are the highest numbers in twenty-one years and are occurring in July, a month where border apprehensions are typically down due to the heat. Since Biden took office in January, U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested over a million people at the border. There is a serious problem at the border, which is now impossible to deny.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the surge “unprecedented” at a news conference following the release of the numbers.
“The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face,” Mayorkas said. “It is complicated, changing, and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic.”
This is a terrible time to have hundreds of thousands of barely filtered people entering the country every month.
It’s directly running against the administration’s message about the seriousness of containing the coronavirus pandemic and the Delta variant. As cities and states consider returning to indoor mask mandates and other restrictions, it seems there are now significant numbers of people infected by the disease being introduced into the U.S. population.