Under President Joe Biden’s administration, illegal border crossing peaked in December, reaching the highest number of crossings since Biden took office.
The figure for illegal border crossings reached 250,000 in December, a month before Biden announced tougher border enforcement policies.
The revelation came in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data release that showed officials had 251,487 encounters with illegal migrants at the nation’s southern border.
The figure represents a 7 percent increase from November 2022 and an 11 percent increase in unique encounters, given officials encountered 216,162 different people.
Nicaraguan and Cuban migrants dominated the number of border crossings, according to the CBP, which believes these migrants are fleeing their authoritarian regimes.
Migrants from Cuba and Nicaragua accounted got 77,000 — or 36 percent — unique encounters at the southern border.
Unique encounters for migrants from Mexico and Central America’s northern region have declined by 6 percent since December 2021, only accounting for 53,000 of the unique encounters in December 2022.
Prior to the CBP’s announcement, the Biden Administration had announced a bevy of measures to bring the number of illegal border crossings under control.
Some of the measures include prohibiting Migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they cross the Mexico border without authorization and continuing the implementation of Title 42.
The Biden administration has also suggested a policy that would prevent migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they haven’t sought asylum in one of the other countries they passed through on the way to the nation’s southern border.
