Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a report Wednesday revealing that border patrol agents apprehended 50,308 persons last month — 37 percent more apprehensions than in February and about 200 percent more than the 16,588 apprehended the same month one year ago.
Though Pres. Trump’s first four months in office saw a 76 percent decline in apprehensions last spring — hitting a 17-year low record — CBP numbers show that illegal immigration has been gradually increasing each month since April 2017, with the exception of a decrease last January.
“While we have been apprehending aliens at the border with historic efficiency — these illicit smuggling groups saw that our ability to actually remove those who come here illegally did not keep pace,” DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielson said in a press briefing yesterday. “They saw that there were loopholes they could exploit to avoid detention and removal.”
Of the 50,308 apprehensions last month, 37,393 were caught by Border Patrol and 12,915 were turned away by CBP at ports of entry. Counted among those either apprehended for attempts to illegally cross the border, or denied entry were 19,279 unaccompanied minors and family units.
Sharp increases in border apprehensions tend to occur anytime there are talks of amnesty in the news cycle. Though there was no DACA deal included in the omnibus spending bill, this sudden surge at the border could be due to amnesty talks between White House officials and Congress in early March.
The CBP report was released the same day that The Trump Administration deployed the National Guard in order to bolster security along the southern border. The White House is expected to release a legislative package that would attempt to purge “loopholes” from the immigration system that perpetuate illegal immigration this month.
For more information on this story, see The Daily Caller and The Washington Times.
