U.S. immigration officials came across a staggering 300,000 immigrants at the southern border in December, making it the highest number of people encountered in a single month in history.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees stationed at the United States-Mexico boundary processed an average of 10,000 immigrants daily for a grand total of more than 302,000 people processed in December, according to a Fox News report Monday. CBP did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for confirmation.
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The previous record of 269,000 encounters was set in September 2023. Prior to that, the record was 252,000 encounters in December 2022.
The figure is 10 times higher than a number of months during the Obama and Trump administrations, when encounters hung at about 30,000 per month.
The large majority of the 302,000 encounters were of immigrants who walked around the port of entry and crossed into the country illegally, while a small percentage tried to enter at the port of entry but were denied admission.
On Dec. 18, authorities encountered 14,509 immigrants at the southern border, the highest number seen in a single day and beyond all other records that the Biden administration has set over the past three years.
Since the start of the government’s fiscal 2024 on Oct. 1, 2023, CBP has encountered more than 785,000 immigrants at the southern border alone, according to federal data.
December’s record-breaking numbers come after 35 months of the border crisis that began when President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
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Biden immediately halted and later permanently canceled billions of dollars in funding for more than 300 miles of border wall projects, attempted to pause all deportations during his first 100 days before being blocked in court, and created a task force to work to unite hundreds of immigrant children who had yet to be reunited with a parent since being separated by immigration officials in 2018.
Biden’s actions, as well as his promises to rescind the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, have triggered millions of people around the globe to travel to the U.S., often passing through several to more than a dozen countries without seeking asylum before arriving in the U.S.
