Border crossing levels unchanged day after Biden executive order

The number of immigrants who illegally crossed the southern border from Mexico appeared to remain unchanged in the day following President Joe Biden’s asylum ban, which took effect at midnight Wednesday.

The Washington Examiner spoke on Wednesday afternoon with four law enforcement officers on the border, including Border Patrol agents in California and Texas, who collectively said they had not seen an immediate increase or decrease in the number of immigrants being arrested overnight, this morning or afternoon. The agents are being granted anonymity in order to speak candidly on the border.

A Border Patrol agent in El Paso, Texas, said agents in his region were “still waiting to see the effects it’s going to have here.”

President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order forbidding adult immigrants from seeking asylum if more than 2,500 people were arrested in a single day across the southern boundary. That protocol will remain in place until at least two weeks after daily arrests have dropped below an average of 1,500 people.

For immigrants, it means they will likely be returned to Mexico or put on planes back to their countries of origin, according to White House officials who briefed reporters on the undertaking Tuesday.

A senior state law enforcement official monitoring the situation in Texas said the number of illegal crossings has been the “same” as recent days, saying it has been “steady here in Texas.”

A senior Border Patrol official in the South Texas region of the Rio Grande Valley said he had yet to see an impact from Biden’s executive order but that the region was already in a great position to handle illegal immigration even before the order’s implementation. Agents in the Rio Grande Valley have set a standard of not releasing immigrants into the United States but rather removing them from the country. 

“We only average 250 apprehensions a day due to consequences,” the Rio Grande Valley official said, referring to the sector’s policy of removing immigrants. “Consequences work.”

A San Diego agent said the order was discussed at a preshift meeting at midnight but that agents were still waiting for guidance on how to carry it out.

“What they told us briefly was that everyone was getting [expedited removal],” the San Diego agent said.

Expedited removal refers to a process created in 1996 that allows Border Patrol to quickly remove someone apprehended at the border without bringing that person’s case before an immigration judge, a process that can take five to 10 years to resolve.

The executive order could be difficult to enforce in San Diego, in particular, given that the region sees immigrants from faraway countries crossing and is not in a position to fly back as many immigrants who are coming from abroad as opposed to immigrants from Central America.

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The San Diego agent said in the past week that immigrants from China, India, Jordan, Georgia, and Colombia have been caught crossing. 

Although senior officials from the Biden administration maintained in a call with reporters that the Department of Homeland Security had begun flying immigrants to several of those countries in recent months and had the capability to continue those flights, officials did not disclose how exactly they would repatriate potentially tens of thousands of immigrants from faraway countries each month.