There has been a startling rise in the number of migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border in recent weeks, including nearly 10,000 unacompanied children in February alone. The Biden Administration has even sent FEMA in to help shelter and transfer migrant children as it tries to address the situation, which they have avoided calling a crisis.
But if you listen to Republicans, it’s a crisis of the highest magnitude. And they’re laying the blame right at Biden’s feet. Senator Tom Cotton, an immigration hardliner, went on twitter to take advantage of the situation and slam the president.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut jumped in to point out that the surge in activity along the border didn’t start when Biden took office.
Cotton wasn’t the only member on the right to try and score political points at Biden’s expense. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that the recent surge of unaccompanied minors at the border is all on the Biden Administration.
““You can’t help but notice that the administration changes and there is a surge.”
Except it’s not necessarily true, according to the numbers. Cotton is flat-out wrong when he claims Biden inherited a secure border. According to recent US Customs and Border Protection analysis, encounters along the southwest border during the final three months of the Trump Administration were as high as they were back in early 2019. CBP numbers for the first three months of Fiscal Year 2021 (Oct.-Dec.) show more encounters than had occurred in any of the first three months of any fiscal year during the Trump presidency.
Those numbers suggest that Trump’s hardline stance against immigration wasn’t keeping migrants from trying to cross the border as his time in office wound down.
His Republican allies would have you believe otherwise, but the numbers don’t lie.