In the two days following President Joe Biden’s Thursday visit to the U.S. border with Mexico, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said over 15,000 illegal immigrants crossed into the United States.
That number included two days in a row of “just over” 7,000 encounters will illegals by CBP officials, plus more than 1,000 “gotaways” — individuals who get across the border but manage to evade law enforcement — on Saturday alone, according to a post to X by Fox News’ Bill Melugin.
Melugin explained that those numbers were likely to increase if they followed the pattern of previous years since Biden, 81, took office.
NEW: Per CBP sources, yesterday saw just over 7,000 migrant encounters at the southern border for the second day in a row, led by Tucson, AZ sector w/ over 2,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants. There were also over 1,000 known gotaways yesterday.
Every year under Biden,…— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 3, 2024
“NEW: Per CBP sources, yesterday saw just over 7,000 migrant encounters at the southern border for the second day in a row, led by Tucson, AZ sector w/ over 2,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants,” Melugin wrote in his post. “There were also over 1,000 known gotaways yesterday.
“Every year under Biden, numbers drop in Jan/Feb, start moving back up in March, then explode in the spring.
“If no action is taken – buckle up for the rest of the year, if the last 3 years are any indication,” the Fox News Channel national correspondent added. “Especially if migrants feel they need to get in before Biden is potentially voted out of office.”
Biden and former President Donald Trump, 77, who is likely to face Biden again in November’s general election, both visited the southern border Thursday, Trump at Eagle Pass, the “epicenter” of the border crisis, and Biden at the more sedate Brownsville, Texas, where far fewer illegal crossings have been seen.
A Gallup poll released two days before those visits showed that immigration was the “country’s single-most important problem” in Americans’ minds, according to Axios.
Is the border the most important issue of 2024?
The issue had not topped that poll since 2019, the outlet noted — not long before the last presidential election.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted at approximately the same time noted that more American voters considered “the situation at the U.S. southern border” to be the Biden administration’s biggest failure, according to The Hill.
“The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll shared with The Hill showed 44 percent of respondents said allowing the influx of migrants that have come across the border has been Biden’s biggest failure,” the outlet reported. “That total includes 57 percent of Republicans, almost half of independents and nearly 30 percent of Democrats.
“Respondents picked a top three from a list of criticisms of the administration,” the Hill’s Jared Gans explained. “The category with the second highest percentage of respondents indicating Biden’s biggest failure was ‘weak leadership at home and abroad’ with 25 percent. “
Biden’s handling of the immigration issued was badly underwater as well, with only 35 percent of the 2,022 registered voters surveyed giving the president thumbs up on the issue.
ABC News cited its own recent poll on the matter, which gave Biden even lower marks for his border policies.
“According to the most recent polling on Biden’s job approval on these issues conducted by ABC News/Ipsos, from mid-January, his rating for handling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border was especially low — just 18% approved, about half what it was in spring 2021, while 63% disapproved,” the outlet reported Thursday.
ABC noted that no other president had ever scored lower on that issue since it began asking the question, the wording of which has naturally shifted over time, in 2004.
Polling also found that 44 percent of American adults polled said that Trump would do a better job handing immigration and border security, versus only 26 percent who trusted Biden more on the issue.
