Illegal immigrant children arriving at the United States-Mexico border is increasing as President Joe Biden’s border crisis reaches a milestone that no other administration has come close to.
According to data from Customs Border and Protection, during the first five months of Fiscal Year 2024, border officials in San Diego, California encountered unaccompanied minors more than 4,000 times. This number is on track to surpass the 7,200 during the previous year.
Since Biden took office in 2021, more than 464,922 immigrant children have been stopped at the southern border by officials. About 95 percent of those successfully crossed the southern border illegally.
“The increase started when the Biden administration announced they were exempting children from Title 42 and announced that we would not be removing children," Rodney Scott, the former Border Patrol chief under the Trump and Biden administrations said.
A San Diego federal judge ordered the government to “expeditiously” process and re-locate illegal immigrant minors who cross the border and into the U.S. The children will be held in unofficial holding areas between the border fences in San Ysidro.
A history of immigrant children arriving unaccompanied at the southern border is not new under the Biden Administration.
With the southern border remaining wide open, deadly cartels have been allowed to conduct drug and human smuggling that ends up in the U.S.— this includes using children as their bait.
Criminal organizations make thousands of dollars per child they smuggle into the U.S.
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., the Biden Administration lifted Trump-era border policies such as Title 42 which was used for more than three years to remove roughly three million illegal aliens and send them back to their native countries.
In February 2021, the president ordered Border Patrol agents to stop sending immigrant children back to Mexico. Within just weeks, hundreds of unaccompanied minors began arriving at the U.S. border daily.
According to data, in 2021 Border Patrol agents apprehended about 144,000 immigrant children. In 2022, more than 149,000 children arrived at the southern border alone.
That number is on track to reach 125,000 by the end of FY24 in September.