The number of families who have entered the United States through the southern border broke a record in August.
Illegal immigration has surged under President Joe Biden, adding additional an burden on border communities as well as major cities across the country.
Families represented the largest demographic group of illegal border crossers last month. At least 91,000 people who were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol were part of family groups in August. The previous highest monthly total was 84,486 in May of 2019.
Border Patrol agents arrested over 177,000 people in total at the southern border in August, continuing the increasing trend. Agents arrested 132,652 people in July and 99,539 in June.
“Family groups have been an Achilles’ heel for U.S. immigration enforcement for over a decade,” reports The Washington Post. “Most migrants in that category who are detained by Border Patrol agents are quickly released and allowed to live and work in the United States while their humanitarian claims are pending. Backlogged U.S. immigration courts typically take several years to reach a decision, and the process rarely ends in deportation, federal data show.”
An estimated 7 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States since Biden took office in 2021.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform has estimated “that illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children impose a net annual cost of $150.6 billion on American taxpayers as of the beginning of 2023.”
Fair warned in an analysis published in June:
According to the previous (2017) cost study, the annual net cost of illegal migration was approximately $116 billion. This means that in the short span of 5 years, the annual cost to American taxpayers has increased by nearly $35 billion. When further adjusted for the increased illegal alien population growth demonstrated by this report, taxpayers are being set up for annual spending to the tune of $163 billion and counting. This burden will only continue to grow as a result of the Biden administration’s open-borders policies.
The Biden administration has claimed it has done more than any previous administration to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
White House Press Secretary told reporters that “the president has done what he can from here, from the federal government, from the White House to put forth and manage our border in a safe and humane way to respect the dignity of every human.”
“The president has done more to secure the border and to deal with this issue of immigration than anybody else,” she said, per Fox News. “He really has. June saw the single largest month-to-month drop in unlawful border crossing because of the policies this president put in place.”
