Illegal Border Crossings Hit More Than 101,500 in February

In February—despite a week of freezing weather—Border Patrol apprehended 101,535 illegal border crossers along the southern border, according to Jaeson Jones, a former Texas Department of Public Safety captain. Another 26,000 people evaded capture, he said. The February number is almost triple the apprehensions from February 2020, when Border Patrol caught almost 37,000 people, while in 2019, on the cusp of the most recent crisis, the number was almost 77,000. Many of those crossing are unaccompanied minors, who cannot be turned back if they’re from a country other than Mexico. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has just opened a second facility for the burgeoning number of minors. As of Feb. 28, approximately 7,700 unaccompanied minors were being housed across in HHS facilities. The number of illegal crossings at the southern border has steadily risen since October 2020. The number of apprehensions between October 2020 and January 2021 was 296,259, while the same period the year prior saw 164,932 apprehensions, according to CBP data...MORE