by Jennie Taer
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered more than 230,000 migrants at the southern border in October, beginning fiscal year 2023 with a record surge, according to agency statistics released late Monday night.
Federal border authorities encountered 230,678 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in October, a 1.3% increase from the previous month, according to CBP. There was also a record number of migrants crossing the border in fiscal year 2022, with roughly 2.3 million migrants encountered by CBP.
The Biden administration has responded to the surge with new policies to expel illegal migrants from Venezuela and Cubaunder Title 42, the Trump-era public health order that the Biden administration sought to end.
“In response to the change in populations we are encountering at the border, and continuing in our commitment to provide lawful pathways for admission so that desperate asylum seekers do not place their vulnerable lives in the hands of smugglers, we implemented a new process for Venezuelan nationals that has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of Venezuelan encounters at our border. The new process has seen Venezuelan encounters drop from approximately 1100 per day to about 300 per day by the end of October,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement of the encounters.
“Encounters of Cuban and Nicaraguan asylum seekers fleeing their authoritarian regimes continues to be at an historic high. This reflects the challenge that is gripping the hemisphere, as displaced populations flee authoritarianism, corruption, violence, and poverty,” Miller added.
CBP’s former commissioner Chris Magnus resigned Saturday after facing allegations that he failed to address the influx of illegal migrants at the border.
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Jennie Taer is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Border Patrol Agent Encounters Migrants” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
