Despite record-breaking numbers of illegal crossings and the crisis’s escalation over the past few months, the Biden administration continues to claim that the southern border is “safe.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Matorkas maintained during his remarks at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Tuesday, “Look, the border is secure.”
But he continued, “Working to make the border more secure” is still something the government is doing.
Mayorkas stated, “That has been a historic challenge,” adding that there is a distinction between the terms “safe” and “secure.”
But despite a general increase in crossings and complaints from New York City and Washington, D.C. that the crisis is finally hitting home after Arizona and Texas started busing migrants to the city hubs to deal with them, insistence that the border is secure comes amid a rise in crossings.
With the release of June figures last week, crossings are at an all-time high for the year, with nearly 1.75 million crossings in Fiscal Year 2022, and there are still three more months to go before a year-end roundup is calculated.
According to statistics from the previous quarter, 200,000 migrants crossed the southern border per month for the preceding three months.
Recent criticism of the influx of migrants into their cities as a result of the busing initiative from Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona came from Democratic Mayors Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., and Eric Adams of New York City.
Adams requested ‘immediately additional federal resources’ from President Joe Biden to address the spike.
The Democratic mayor stated in a prepared statement that “if we do not get these urgently needed resources, we may struggle to provide the proper level of support our clients deserve, while also facing challenges as we serve both a rapidly expanding shelter population and new clients who are seeking asylum.”
The request is similar to those made by border state officials ever since Biden assumed office and the migration crisis exploded after the administration declared that the border was open to all, in contrast to Donald Trump’s four years of strict immigration policies.
Asylum seekers who are bused there are also beginning to fill up homeless shelters in the nation’s capital.
On Sunday morning, Bowser said on the CBS News programme Face the Nation, “Well, this is a very significant issue.”
We have undoubtedly urged the federal government to cooperate with state governments to stop people from being deceived into boarding buses.
She continued, “I worry that they’re being duped into taking cross-country bus trips when their final destinations are locations all over the United States of America.”
In D.C., at least 4,000 immigrants have arrived. In April, Texas began transporting migrants there by bus, and in May, Arizona followed their neighbouring state’s example. More than 3,000 people have recently arrived in NYC.
The dilemma at the border must be addressed before lawmakers enact legislation, Secretary Mayorkas told a group of lawmakers.
“I take issue with the concept of holding the solution hostage until the problem is fixed,” Mayorkas said on Tuesday.
He continued, “There are smugglers that operate on the Mexican side of the border, and trusting them with your life is not safe.”
According to data from June that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) provided this week, there were 207,416 interactions with migrants in June alone as opposed to 189,034 in June of last year.
In June 2020, the final year of Trump’s administration, there were 33,049 contacts.
With the most recent June statistics, Fiscal Year 2022 has already seen 1,746,119 interactions with migrants at the southern border, surpassing the 1,734,686 encounters CBP had with migrants in the prior year.
The fiscal year has three more months to go.