Encounters at Border Decreased by More Than 50% Thanks to Actions Taken by President Biden

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Since President Joe Biden’s Presidential Proclamation and additional Interim Final Rule on June 4th, border encounters have decreased by more than 50%, according to new statistics shared by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Monday.

“These executive actions have led to a significant increase in the percentage of migrants removed from the United States and a decrease in the number of people released pending their removal proceedings, as explained in recent DHS Fact Sheets from June and July,” CBP explained.

They say DHS removed or returned more than 131,000 individuals to more than 140 countries and total removals and returns over the past year exceed removals and returns in any fiscal year since 2010.

“The data published today by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that since President Biden announced new, decisive executive actions to secure the border on June 4, encounters between ports of entry have dropped significantly and remain at their lowest level in years – July and August saw the lowest encounter levels since September 2020. Encounters in August 2024 were 68% lower than August 2023 and have decreased by more than 50% since President Biden announced the executive actions,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA.

Hernández went on to explain that this victory belongs to President Biden and Vice President Harris, because after working with conservative Republicans on a bipartisan border bill, ex-president Donald Trump told them not to pass it, because Trump thought chaos at the border would be good for his political future.

“For months, the Biden-Harris Administration worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to craft a historic bipartisan border security agreement that would have added thousands of frontline personnel to the border – but Congressional Republicans voted against that agreement twice – proving that they are more interested in cynically playing politics than securing the border. The Biden-Harris Administration has taken effective action, and Republican officials continue to do nothing.”

Republicans have countered Biden’s successful strategy by saying if he could have taken executive action before, why didn’t he, and that’s a fair question to ask if someone is NOT a lawmaker or former president.

The answer is that a good president will try to avoid taking power from Congress via executive action. The unitary executive theory is one embraced by people like Chief Justice Roberts, who advocated for the Supreme Court to find that Donald Trump’s (assumed) right to presidential immunity was protected.

It is rarely a good idea to expand presidential powers, although with presidential immunity granted by this court, perhaps President Biden will at least fire DeJoy on his way out.

The border is under much greater control, thanks to the Biden-Harris administration. Not a single Republican can claim to have been a part of this success; all they did was make sure more drugs and human trafficking occurred all so Donald Trump had a head start in the election.

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Sarah Jones

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