Border towns overwhelmed as crossings continue to surge
Texas Deputy Constable Hal Bowles, Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines, and former El Paso U.S. Marshal Robert Almonte on what border communities are experiencing and how local officials have had to step up during the crisis
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The number of migrant encounters at the southern border rose to over 200,000 in August, as the border faced an increase in migrants coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, which officials said was driving a “new wave of migration” across the Hemisphere.
There were 203,598 encounters on the border, a slight increase from the 199,976 encountered in July and lower than the 209,840 encountered in August last year.
Of the 203,598, officials said 157, 921 were unique migrant encounters, with the rest attributed to those who had multiple encounters with officials and had been expelled or deported.
According to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, encounters with migrants from Mexico and Central America were down for the third month in a row, accounting for just 36% of unique encounters, while 55,333 unique encounters were from the totalitarian regimes of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, a 175% increase over last year.
MIGRANT DEATHS AT BORDER REACH RECORD 782 THIS YEAR, CBP OFFICIALS SAY
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus in a statement.
The Biden administration has been fending off significant criticism from Republicans over its handling of the raging crisis at the southern border. There have now been over two million encounters this fiscal year, in addition to the more than 1.7 million encounters last fiscal year.
The administration has claimed that it is both reconstructing legal asylum pathways that were broken down during the Trump administration, while also touting a strategy that targets “root causes” of the crisis like poverty, violence and climate change in Central America.
Migrants rest after crossing the Rio Grande River as they wait to get apprehended by Border Patrol agents as National Guard agents sit on a car across the street (out of frame), in Eagle Pass, Texas, at the border with Mexico on June 30, 2022.
(CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Officials said Republican critics have instead pointed to…
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