The Border Patrol has finally deigned to release its August numbers, waiting until about 5 pm on a Friday to do it. I can only assume that's because the numbers, once again, were bad:
Border encounters were up 27% to 233,000 in August. About 50,000 of these were legal asylum requests while the rest were illegal crossings between ports of entry.
CBP is very bad at releasing the statistics people might actually be interested in. For example, the theory behind President Biden's border policy is that if you apply legally for asylum, well and good. But if you cross the border illegally and then ask for asylum you will be put on a fast track for deportation. So how many illegal immigrants are being quickly sent back to Mexico? Here's what CBP has to say:
Since May 2023, DHS has repatriated over 250,000 individuals, including more than 36,000 individual family members. DHS has removed or returned more individual family members in the last four months than in any previous full fiscal year.
That sounds nice, but would it kill them to provide numbers for this going back a few years? That would give us a better idea of the net number of people who are entering the country and staying, versus those who are merely "encountered" and then sent back.
But they don't do that, so I have no idea whether Biden's policy is working. CBP is certainly implying that it works, but concrete numbers just aren't there.
There's a still backlogs from the Trump days. Not sure what the policy is for refugees from Venezuela, etc., where we don't have a way to repatriate them.
At least some are getting temporary protected status so can get work papers.
Don't you think that's not an accident?
So, is the number of encounters up because there are lots more people crossing the border so each patrol has a better chance of an encounter, or because there are more patrols, or because each patrol is more effective due to better intelligence/surveillance?