Arizona Border Sector Migrant Arrests Jump for Third Straight Week as Biden Announces Immigration Executive Order

Migrant apprehensions in the Tucson Sector jumped for the third straight week. Agents in the Arizona border sector apprehended nearly 8,000 migrants shortly before President Joe Biden announced his newest immigration executive order.

Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin reported on social media that his agents apprehended 7,800 migrants during the week ending May 31. The following Wednesday, President Biden announced his executive order allegedly capping the number of daily migrant crossings.

Under Biden’s executive order, the Department of Homeland Security would only restrict migrants illegally crossing the border between ports of entry when the number hits 2,500 per day on a seven-day average, Breitbart News reported. The Tucson Sector alone averaged more than 1,000 apprehensions per day during the seven-day period ending May 31.

The National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) wrote in an analysis of the order, “Biden is about to officially legitimize crisis levels of illegal immigration through a variety of avenues (around 2 million a year) while gutting interior enforcement by refusing to arrest, detain, and deport illegal aliens in accordance with the law.”

Breitbart Texas reported, citing an unofficial Border Patrol chart, that during the month of May, Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 118,000 migrants — more than 3,800 per day. The May apprehensions were the third-lowest month for migrant arrests during the Biden era. During Fiscal Year 23, agents apprehended an average of more than 6,780 migrants per day. So far this fiscal year, agents apprehended approximately 6,715 migrants per day.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded to the president’s executive order as a “smokescreen for President Biden’s failed open border policies.” He added, “This executive order will do nothing but further an invasion into our country, inviting thousands of unvetted illegal immigrants to cross the border every single day—the exact opposite of shutting down the border.”

Abbott said Biden’s order “essentially legalizes the millions of illegal immigrants already in our country and allows thousands more to illegally cross our southern border daily.”