The number of migrant encounters in Texas surged in December, a greater monthly increase than that seen in the previous three years.
For months, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has feuded with the federal government over the record levels of migrants crossing the border from Mexico. In December, about 300,000 migrants—nearly 10,000 per day—came into the U.S. through Mexico, including about 250,000 between ports of entry, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. That same month, there were 155,789 migrant encounters in Texas.
Federal border agents encountered about 2.5 million migrants in total last year, surpassing the previous record high from a year earlier, the CBP said.
Abbott has made the issue a national one since 2022, when he began sending buses of migrants to Democratic-led "sanctuary cities" that protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. Since being inundated with record levels of migrants, Democratic mayors from such cities as New York, Chicago and Denver—along with Democratic governors in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Mexico—have pleaded with the Biden administration for more federal assistance to subsidize shelter and health care costs.
Between November and December, part of the current 2024 fiscal year, migrant encounters in Texas increased by 39,122, according to CBP data. Numbers between October and November decreased by about 10,000.
The 155,789 encounters in December surpassed the previous fiscal year's total by about 1,000 migrants. However, the difference is dramatic compared with the 2022 and 2021 fiscal years, when 105,705 and 45,393 migrants, respectively, were detained at the Texas border.
Texas-based encounters this current year have mostly been with single adults and family unit aliens, identified by the CPB as children who are apprehended with one or more parents or legal guardians. The number of single minors and unaccompanied children decreased.
Last week, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that federal Border Patrol agents could remove razor wire and other barriers put up along the border to curb immigration. The decision tossed gasoline on a fire already brewing between Texas and the Biden administration, with Abbott vowing to continue to utilize the Texas National Guard to combat record numbers of migrant encounters.
In December, a federal appeals court ruled that a 1,000-foot barrier installed by Texas on the Rio Grande in July to stop migrants from traveling through the waterway to the Texas border city of Eagle Pass had to be moved. The barrier consisted of wrecking ball-size buoys with serrated discs.
But the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Texas later reversed the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Texas and Abbott.
Esther Sung, legal director of the Justice Action Center, told Newsweek the federal government could sue Texas in the same way it did with the floating barriers.
"The razor wire is another chapter in Texas's playbook of cruelty towards people seeking safety," said Sung, who has litigated lawsuits challenging former President Donald Trump's Muslim bans and Arizona anti-immigration laws.
She continued: "It's another blatant attempt to override federal authority, but it's one that the conservative courts in the 5th Circuit are allowing. It's also one that the Biden administration isn't doing enough to counter, either politically or in the courts.
"As a result, it's a political stunt that has cost lives and is the opposite of what the majority of Americans have expressed support for," she said.
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Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
