By Staff Reporter |

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed during a recent visit to Tucson that the Biden administration has reduced illegal immigration.

Levels of border encounters have dropped since this time last year, but remain much higher than those that occurred during the 2022 fiscal year and exponentially higher than those of past administrations.

Mayorkas held a press conference last week at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. In his remarks, Mayorkas claimed that southwest border encounters dropped 40 percent since President Joe Biden took executive action. 

“We are imposing stricter consequences for those who cross the border without authorization,” said Mayorkas. “These actions are changing the calculus for those considering crossing our border.”

Mayorkas also claimed that the blame lies with Congress, not Biden, for the prolongation of the border crisis. 

The secretary said that Congress needed to provide more funding to hire agents, officers, support personnel; buy, install, and maintain technology; and equip border agents to remove illegal immigrants.

Just several days after addressing Tucsonans, Mayorkas granted an 18-month temporary amnesty to over 300,000 illegal Haitian immigrants. Mayorkas and the Biden administration stated that the migrants don’t pose a threat to national interest.

Yet earlier this year, a Haitian man was arrested for murder and criminal possession of a weapon. That Haitian national, Kenol Baptiste, came into the country using the controversial Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) One app. The CBP One app has come under scrutiny for its perceived facilitation of illegal migration; it began allowing appointment scheduling last January, offering otherwise illegal immigrants the option to schedule an appearance at a port of entry to be released into the country rather than go through smugglers.

Since last January and through May, the app has brought in over 636,600 individuals according to the CBP.  

The House impeached Mayorkas earlier this year over his handling of the border crisis, but the Senate later opted to dismiss the impeachment. 

While the numbers presented by Mayorkas appeared high, total illegal border crossings remain at historical highs. 

According to CBP data last updated in May, southwest border encounters totaled nearly 1.7 million this fiscal year (from October to present), a decline of 46,00 from this time last year and an increase of 152,000 from this time in the 2022 fiscal year.

Since Biden took office, there have been over 8.1 million illegal immigrant encounters. That number serves as an estimate of total illegal immigrant entries, as it doesn’t include “gotaways,” or those who evaded detection upon entry. 

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) pointed out that the Biden administration continues to allow over 70,000 illegal immigrants into the country through the CBP One app and the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) parole program, the latter which FAIR disputed was unlawful. 

Violent crimes involving illegal immigrants have been on the rise under this administration. The most high-profile cases have frequently involved illegal immigrants who were either inadmissible for admission or were eligible for deportation.

Earlier this week, two employees in a Texas Chick-fil-A restaurant were shot and killed by an El Salvador illegal immigrant, 37-year-old Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta. 

A number of murders by illegal immigrants also occurred earlier this month. 

In Texas, two Venezuelan illegal immigrants — Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26 — murdered a 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray. In New York, 21-year-old Ecuadorian illegal immigrant Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis murdered a 21-year-old woman on her birthday. 

Last month, police arrested 23-year-old El Salvador illegal immigrant Victor Martinez-Hernandez for raping and killing 37-year-old Rachel Morrin, a Maryland mother of five, while she was on a run last August. Martinez-Hernandez allegedly fled his home country last February due to accusations of murdering another woman there. 

Earlier this year, an illegal immigrant who had been scheduled to be removed in 2020, 25-year-old Mexican citizen Brandon Ortiz-Vite, was arrested for the murder of Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old woman in Michigan. 

There was also the murder of 22-year-old college student Laken Riley in Georgia by 26-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra. Ibarra was permitted entry despite documented ties to Teen de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang operating in New York and Georgia, the two states he would live in before murdering Riley. 

Even with the rising concerns of public safety and resources illegal immigrants impose, the Biden administration has made more public resources available to them. 

In November, DACA recipients (also called “Dreamers”) will qualify for Affordable Care Act health care. American taxpayers will be on the hook for nearly 600,000 DACA recipients, nearly 21,000 of which reside in Arizona. 

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