Like all of you, I've been hearing endless reports that border encounters are way down since President Biden eliminated Title 42 enforcement last month. Today the Border Patrol released the official monthly count for May, and I was surprised to see . . . nothing:
Total encounters were down by only 6,500 people from April, or about 3%. Needless to say, this is only a single month of data, which can cut both ways. Reality might be substantially higher or lower when we get border results for the rest of the year.
But there's another way of looking at this. Title 42 expulsions, which can be used by border officers to turn away asylum seekers if they're deemed a health risk, are way down—and yet total encounters have hardly changed at all. Here's a chart that shows all encounters except Title 42 ever since the policy began in March 2020:
This produces a somewhat different picture. Border encounters excluding Title 42 are up nearly 50,000 people in May, a 40% increase. I'm truly not sure what to make of this. The elimination of Title 42 obviously eliminated Title 42 (the remaining small number of Title 42 expulsions in May are from the beginning of the month, before it was revoked). Duh. But non-Title-42 encounters were up considerably. So does this mean that, measured correctly, border encounters are up or down? I'm not deep enough in the weeds of illegal immigration to know.
As an aside, it's worth noting that the partisan conservative take on the border is almost certainly wrong. Border encounters skyrocketed in early 2021, and this is almost certainly due to the lingering effects of Donald Trump's policies before Joe Biden had a chance to do anything significant.
Since then, border encounters have been up and down, but today they're about the same as they were in the middle of 2021. It's fair to say that Biden hasn't done anything to reduce illegal immigration or asylum claims, but it's almost certainly not true to say that he's done anything much to increase them either.
Which policies would those be? The other interpretation of the increase through 2021 is potential immigrants/migrants saw their chances better after the inauguration.
I think the correct interpretation is that a higher number of encounters indicates the border patrol is working harder. The record high number of encounters during Biden's administration say that border security efforts have never been greater than on Biden's watch.
That. And the wall Mexico paid for isn't working.
So the Border Patrol just didn’t care during the Trump administration?
The point isn't the sheer number of apprehensions at the border one way or the other. The point is the perception of "chaos" at the border. And if there is none, if everyone is doing their job the best they can, then there's no burning "issue" and the GOP will have to try something else.
I think the major change we're seeing is that over the past couple of years, migrants have shifted from trying to sneak over the border -- which, wall or no wall, is increasingly difficult to do completely undetected -- and instead go to legal ports of entry and make an asylum claim. They make a report, get a court date, but are at least allowed into the country legally while their case is pending. This is a big problem, however, because the vast majority of these people don't have a legal asylum claim and once they have their day in court, they're going to be told they have to go home. But that's going to be five years down the road. In the meantime, they've built a life here, have jobs, have kids, a house, etc. The answer is of course to make legal immigration easier for people who are just trying to improve their lives, not just journalists or activists being persecuted by authoritarian regimes, but of course, we can't have grown-up conversations about that in the US today.