Immigration

‘Catastrophic’: Former Trump Officials Shred Biden Admin Over Record-Setting Migrant Encounters

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As migrant encounters for December break all records, former Trump administration officials say the Biden administration is solely to blame.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed that authorities encountered more than 250,000 migrants at the southern border in December, as previously reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The number shows the staggering results of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, according to three Trump administration officials who spoke with the DCNF.

“What’s been happening at the border the last two years continues to be a catastrophic crisis, and the White House, Secretary Mayorkas, and the open-borders advocates on the left continue to lie about it. Under the last Democratic president, 25,000 encounters was a borderline crisis — for the Biden administration, 10 times that number is simply business as usual,” former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said in a statement to the DCNF.

Former acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Chief of Staff Lora Ries, who currently directs the Heritage Foundation’s border security team, said the number shows that there needs to be leadership change from the top, in a statement to the DCNF.

“This cannot continue for two more years, until the American people have a chance to reject the presidential policies that have caused this crisis. Congress needs to actually step up, do its job, and hold the Biden administration accountable. Whether that’s through impeachment, withholding funding, or a constant stream of oversight hearings, they have the tools. They just need to exercise the political will—for once,” Ries said.

Biden announced Jan. 5 new expulsion policies for illegal migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. The plan also includes a pathway for migrants from those countries to have the opportunity to apply for asylum legally at U.S. ports of entry if they have a U.S. sponsor.

Meanwhile, for months the Biden administration has fought to scrap some Trump-era expulsion policies, such as Title 42 and “Remain in Mexico.” Both policies are still in place due to court orders, while the Supreme Court will weigh the future of Title 42 in February.

The high court stepped in just before the policy was set to expire Dec. 21.

Based on Biden’s policy decisions, he’s “intentionally” wreaking havoc on the border, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan said in a statement to the DCNF.

“Joe Biden is the first president in my lifetime to intentionally un-secure the border,” Homan said. “By way of more than 90 executive orders, he undid the successful Trump-era policies that brought illegal immigration to a 40-year low and gave us the most secure border of our lifetimes.”

“This president and his team were warned what would happen if they got rid of those policies. They did it anyway, and you’re looking at the consequences,” Homan said.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

CBP, however, is defending the surge, saying it “shows our new border enforcement measures are working.”

“Even as overall encounters rose because of smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order, we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82% from September 2022,” acting CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement.