Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary under former President Barack Obama, told MSNBC on Wednesday the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, kicked started by the Biden administration, is "unsustainable" because of the large number of illegal border crossings.
The Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday they are preparing to encounter up to 18,000 illegal immigrants a day during the busy spring and summer seasons, especially once Title 42 is removed. Title 42 has been used since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the virus from being spread while in Border Patrol holding facilities but it may end soon as COVID restrictions have eased.
"The border is a tough issue. I am waiting to see when and if they drop Title 42 for the southern border. It is the, frankly, a way to keep the numbers down, although these numbers are pretty high," said Johnson.
"Typically, the largest months are March and April...We are about to hit one million in six months. My highest year was 68,000 the entire year, and that politically felt like the world was coming to an end. These are very, very large numbers. They are unsustainable in my view," he continued. "You make a good point, that if Title 42 is lifted then the public health debate may move to the southern border."
Johnson has previously said he considered it to be a big problem if Border Patrol was apprehending 1,000 people per day. To put the numbers in context, DHS is having to prepare to house, care, and transport more than one Del Rio bridge from September 2021 a day, when 15,000 of mostly Haitians were forced to camp under the international bridge after illegally crossings into Texas due to lack of space.
