The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has disclosed its statistics for April, encompassing encounters with illegal migrants, drug seizures, and other operations. The data release details the agency's efforts to safeguard the supply chain and curtail the volume of drugs crossing the border.
Troy A. Miller, the senior official performing the duties of the commissioner, stated in a May 15 news release on April 2024 statistics, "CBP continues to surge resources and personnel to impacted sectors along the border to ensure safe, swift, and orderly processing of individuals to maximize expedited removals. We have redoubled our efforts, in coordination with partners throughout the hemisphere and around the world, to disrupt criminal organizations and transportation networks who are putting vulnerable migrants in danger while peddling lies and profiting from them. We have executed the largest surge of removals and disruptive activities against human smuggling networks in the past decade."
According to the May 15 news release, there were 128,900 encounters with migrants between ports of entry along the southwest border during April. This figure represents a decrease of 6% from March's numbers and is 30% lower than that recorded in April 2023. In addition to these encounters, CBP also reported rescuing 411 migrants during this period. This brings the total number of rescues for fiscal year 2024 up to 3,096.
During April, CBP also intercepted nearly 400 shipments originating from China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. These shipments were valued at over $184 million. Furthermore, following more than a dozen audits conducted by CBP during this period, it was revealed that $13 million in duties and fees were owed to the US government. Of this identified amount due, CBP collected $5.7 million from previous fiscal years' assignments.
Miller further added in his May 15 statement: "As a result of this increased enforcement, southwest border encounters have not increased, bucking previous trends. We will remain vigilant to continually shifting migration patterns. We are still experiencing challenges along the borders and the nation’s immigration system is not appropriately resourced to handle them, so we continue to call on Congress to take action that would provide our personnel with additional resources and tools."
