Illegal border crossings reached a 20-year high in April, with immigration officials apprehending more than 178,622 illegal immigrants at the southern border.
The number of illegal immigrants caught trying to enter the country continues to rise, according to officials.
April’s apprehensions were up 3% from March’s, which totaled 172,331.
Since October 2020, nearly 750,000 immigrants have been caught illegally trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
The majority of those crossings have occurred during President Joe Biden’s administration.
Many of the migrants seeking access to the U.S. are families or unaccompanied minors, since the Biden administration repealed Trump era policies that allowed border officials to turn both groups away in an effort to avoid filling government facilities with people during the coronavirus pandemic.
Since Biden’s repeal went into effect, 17,171 unaccompanied children have crossed the border, and more than 50,000 families were detained in the month of April alone.
As of Tuesday, the number of migrant children being held in federal facilities has more than doubled in the past two months, according to the Associated Press.
The number of single adults entering the U.S. illegally has risen, too.
In April, border officials arrested 111,000 single adults, and most were returned to Mexico.
But officials said that once these migrants are returned to Mexico, many make illegal attempts to reenter the U.S. in unfenced areas.
Nearly 40% of the adults they arrest are reoffenders, Customs and Border Protection said.
Still, the Biden administration has refused to acknowledge that the situation at the southern border is a humanitarian crisis.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki even blamed the media for being a “big driver” behind the use of the term “crisis,” which she said is not an accurate description.
“Really what we had to be focused on was what we were going to do about it and to us it’s like that wasn’t really a crisis, it was a huge challenge,” Psaki said of the border crisis. “But really a big driver was we understand and know the nature of some components of social media and media these days and we just didn’t want to feed into that on this issue or really any issue.”
