U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reportedly seen a 719 percent increase in Chinese national encounters at the southern border so far in fiscal year 2023.
According to CBP data released on Feb. 10, the agency encountered 2,999 Chinese nationals at the border. The total also exceeds the amount recorded for the entirety of fiscal year 2022, during which 2,176 such encounters were reported.
“We literally apprehend immigrants from China,” former CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said at a Feb. 9 press conference. “Do you think we are getting what their background is before we release them? Of course we’re not.”
The CBP encounter data includes illegal immigrants who have been detained in accordance with “Title 8” immigration law, “Title 8” inadmisibles, and noncitizens who are being processed for deportation under “Title 42,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Along the U.S.-Mexico border at this time last year, Border Patrol agents had encountered 366 Chinese nationals altogether.
But, on a national level, the year-over-year increase in encounters is less pronounced; the current total for this fiscal year is 10,587 as opposed to 9,707 last year. Yet, the pattern has started to worry some current and former officials since national totals have been rising month after month since October 2022.
This comes as the Biden administration continues to struggle with the massive influx of migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico. The U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers since President Joe Biden announced last year that he would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
Since then, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported that nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border for the fiscal year ending in September, surpassing the already-historic number of 1.7 million migrant detainees in 2021.
The numbers are likely to increase should the Biden administration end “Title 42.” The DHS has said repeatedly that it has a six-point plan in place to deal with the imminent influx in population that it anticipates will occur. This includes an increase in resources and manpower, as well as a greater use of alternative authorities more frequently.
