Chairman Green on September Border Encounter Numbers: “We Simply Cannot Go on Like This as a Country”

October 22, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) issued the following statement after the release of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border encounter numbers for September 2024, the final month of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024:

“You wouldn’t know it from the way President Biden, his ‘border czar,’ Vice President Harris, and their defenders in the media are talking about these numbers, but this was the second-worst year in terms of inadmissible alien encounters ever—only surpassed by the all-time record Biden and Harris set just last fiscal year. In terms of official encounters, this year was a disaster. Every day, Americans are experiencing the consequences of the unchecked flow of inadmissible aliens into their communities. There are countless examples of those aliens going on to commit crimes against innocent Americans, and many of them create financial burdens for state and local governments who are already struggling to provide resources to their citizens. We simply cannot go on like this as a country. These open-borders policies have devastated our safety, security, and sovereignty. It’s time to return to policies that secured our border and our nation.”

Background:

CBP closes out FY24 having recorded more than 1.5 million illegal alien apprehensions between ports of entry along the Southwest border, and more than 23,000 illegal alien apprehensions between ports of entry along the northern border (compared to just 916 in FY21). Meanwhile, inadmissible encounters at official ports of entry nationwide nearly quadrupled from FY21, rising from around 294,000 that year to more than 1.34 million in FY24. This rise is in large part because the Biden-Harris administration has encouraged would-be illegal border crossers to enter using a host of unlawful, mass-parole programs the Biden-Harris administration has schemed up—most notably the CBP One and CHNV parole programs.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has admitted to the Committee, in documents obtained via subpoena, that all those who are making use of these parole programs are otherwise inadmissible, but they are being released into the country anyway. In other words, the Biden-Harris administration has simply been playing a massive shell game, trying to make the crisis look contained, when in reality, the outcome is the same—tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens being released into American communities every month.

The numbers below demonstrate how the border crisis exploded under Biden and Harris, and should serve as a stark warning to all Americans of the consequences of open-borders, anti-enforcement policies.

The Biden-Harris Border Crisis, By the Numbers:

Inadmissible Encounters, Nationwide