West Virginia's Capito: Southern border crossings down, but still too high

WASHINGTON (WV News) — There are still too many migrants entering the U.S. illegally via the southern border, says US Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

Although the number of migrants attempting to cross the border has fallen dramatically since the expiration of Title 42 — the pandemic-era measure that allowed the U.S. to refuse entry on health grounds — more needs to be to done, Capito said Thursday during her weekly briefing.

“Yes, they are down, but still are enormously higher than at any average time during our immigration, when we began to take statistics and keep statistics,” she said. “They are still very, very high — they’re just not as high as they were.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in an appearance on CNN after Title 42 expired, said Border Patrol agents reported a 50% drop in attempted border crossings within days of the end of the policy.

Part of the decline is due to shifts in immigration policy by the Biden administration, Capito said.

“The administration has changed some of their regulations to force the immigrants to come through the legal points of entry,” she said. “If you’re caught coming through illegal point of entry, then your chance of ever getting here is quite demised. I think that’s a good policy.”

Still, there are other measures she would like to see the administration take, Capito said.

“We still need the resources. We still need to keep building the wall and using our surveillance,” she said. “We need to also, I think, put ‘Remain in Mexico’ [back in place]. You saw that as a deterrent during the Trump administration.”

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, formally called “Migrant Protection Protocols,” allowed the U.S. to release political asylum seekers in Mexico as they waited for their cases to be heard in the U.S.

At the beginning of June, the U.S. Border Patrol issued a warning urging migrants not to attempt to illegally enter the country by swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

During May, there were multiple recorded incidents in which migrants swam across the maritime boundary line — seven migrants were apprehended, while nine managed to swim back to Mexico before agents could apprehend them.

“Swimming across the maritime boundary line is extremely dangerous for even the most experienced swimmers,” said San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke.