Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee are criticizing the Biden administration for "celebrating" June's border numbers – amid a battle over the narrative of what shifting migrant numbers means for the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data released this week showed there were 144,571 migrant encounters in June, compared to 207,834 in June last year and 189,034 in June 2021. In June 2020, there were just 33,049 at the border.
The numbers are high, compared to pre-2021 numbers. (June’s numbers are still higher than any month of the 2019 border crisis.) However, they mark the lowest at the border since February 2021 and a sharp drop from the 206,702 seen in May and 211,999 in April. A decrease is particularly unusual during the summer months.
Administration officials have tied the drop in encounters to measures introduced by the Biden administration as Title 42 ended in May. Those include dramatically expanded legal pathways -- including allowing 1,450 migrants in a day through ports of entry via the CBP One App -- and a rule to limit asylum for those who enter illegally.
The agency noted that the number of people crossing illegally had dropped to 99,545, a 42% decrease from May. Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller hailed "sustained efforts" to enforce consequences and expand access to pathways for having "driven the number of migrant encounters along the Southwest border to their lowest levels in more than two years."
In an interview published Friday in Politico, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed to both the "lawful pathways" and the asylum rule as reasons for the numbers.
