U.S. Customs and Border Protection waited until 11 p.m. this past Friday to release their operational statistics showing the agency made a record 2,766,582 enforcement actions in FY2022 – 41% more than in FY2021 (1,956,519); a huge 328% jump over FY2020 (646,822). In the just completed fiscal year, CBP also recorded 98 apprehensions of illegal aliens on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Dataset, dwarfing the number over the five previous fiscal years combined (30). The total number of illegal aliens encountered under Joe Biden is now 4.7 million.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, admits he's suspicious of the timing. "When you release these data late on a Friday evening, it kind of gives you the impression that they're trying to hide something from the American public – especially on the eve of an important midterm election," he tells AFN.
Mehlman explains that these kinds of numbers are clearly not something the Biden administration wants the American people to know about.
"It is a policy that they want to maintain," he says, "but they want to do it in a way that it escapes the attention of the American public … because clearly, the American public doesn't want this."
Mehlman says DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – who has authority over CBP – clearly hid these border numbers on behalf of President Biden for political purposes, which is why he released them late on a Friday night. FAIR also has accused Mayorkas of intentionally undermining the U.S. immigration enforcement system – something the group says he has done "every single day" since becoming head of the Department of Homeland Security.
