This is from AP yesterday, October 4, 2023:
I heard on C-Span yesterday Minority Whip Senator John Thune say that in September, 2023 "...What is happening on our Southern Border is an absolute disaster...260,000 people apprehended trying to come into the country illegally in the month of September, a new record, all-time record, or as Senator Barrasso likes to put it, 11,000 people per day".
That statement was the basis for my post last night that 11,000 people entering (totally my fault) the U.S. illegally per day was unacceptable as substantive policy and politically for the Democrats.
Taking Thune's statement literally, "8,667 per day were apprehended trying to come...illegally". Not 11,000 "as Senator Barrasso likes to put it."
Today I tried to source Thune's statement.
CBS, Oct. 1:
Border Patrol agents last month recorded approximately 210,000 apprehensions of migrants who entered the U.S. without authorization in between official ports of entry along the Mexican border, an increase from 181,000 in August, internal statistics from the Department of Homeland Security show.
That is 7,000 apprehensions per day in Sept., not 11,000, not 8,667. There is also contradiction in the terminology used. Thune clearly said "apprehended trying to come in". CBS says "entered the U.S." Perhaps a quibble: How could they be apprehended if they had not "entered"? But it is a quibble Thune made explicit. Although, since the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended them then the U.S. must house them until they are, presumably, deported. The burden does still fall upon us.
Not a quibble: It is Border Patrol's job to apprehend. They are doing their job. It is the job of the U.S. government, through, among other departments the Border Patrol, to deal with those apprehended pursuant to our laws, the same laws on which they were apprehended, prior to resolution of their status. There is nothing that the Border Patrol or the American government can do to prevent people from other lands from "trying to come into the country illegally".
