Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
More than 1.7 million undocumented migrants have been apprehended while crossing the southern United States border, and at least 20,000 more have formed a caravan in Mexico, but the man President Joe Biden has tabbed to lead U.S. Customs and Border Patrol stopped short of calling it a crisis.
According to data released by CBP and a report by the Washington Post, the U.S. has already eclipsed its previous record for border apprehensions in a year.
The data also shows that the amount of immigrant contacts more than tripled compared to last year, and skyrocketed once Biden took office. Conservatives have pointed directly to Biden’s lax immigration policies as the reason for the border crisis.
On Tuesday, during his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Chris Magnus – police chief of Tuscon, Ariz., and the nominee to head CBP – called the situation “urgent” and “serious” but stopped short of characterizing it as a crisis, a rhetorical distinction that drew criticism from Republicans.
Magnus asked if it mattered whether the word crisis was used.
“Regardless of what we call it, it is something important to me,” he said during questioning from Sen. Todd Young (R – Ind.).
Young was particularly interested in getting a firm yes or no on the question of a crisis at the border.
“Let me assure you that no one believes there is greater urgency to this matter than I do,” Magnus told Sen. Todd Young (R – Ind.), who had asked if a crisis existed at the border.
This response did not seem to satisfy Young, who said, “urgent strikes the common ear as less than a crisis.”
Young later issued a press release in which he questioned Magnus’ working knowledge of U.S. immigration law.
As Magnus was being vetted by the Senate committee, more than 20,000 migrants were amassing in in Southern Mexico, with a plan of traveling to the U.S. border.
Julia Ainsley of NBC News reports the group is made up of migrants fleeing Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American countries. Ainsley reports that members of the caravan are having violent clashes with Mexican police, as the government of Mexico attempts to prevent the caravan from moving north to the U.S. border.