SAN ANTONIO — Governor Greg Abbott has officially upped the state's level of enforcement at the Texas-Mexico border, allowing local police to arrest migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally via a new law taking effect in March.
The bills also introduced a mandatory 10-year minimum prison sentence for those convicted of smuggling migrants in Texas, makes it a criminal offense to enter or re-enter, and allocations $1.54 billion more to building additional border wall and fencing. The trio of new bills signed into law Monday is expected to face swift legal action.
While introducing the bills alongside other state leaders in Brownsville, Abbott made several claims about the state of the border and what he called "the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas" while continuing to blast the federal government for not doing enough to secure it. Below we look into two of the claims.
Claim 1: "Three times the number of residents of Chicago have entered illegally under Joe Biden."
What we found: Misleading
Chicago is home to nearly 2.72 million residents, three times which is 8.16 million. Abbott on Monday said the number of those who entered under the Biden administration stood at 8 million.
According to data released by Customs and Border Protection, there have been about 6.53 million encounters between U.S. Border Patrol and migrants between February 2021 -- right after Biden took office -- and October 2023, when the most recent monthly data is available. Adding in the estimated number of 1.7 million "gotaways," defined by the Department of Homeland Security as individuals who "after making unlawful entry, are not turned back or apprehended, and are no longer being actively pursued by agents," the number balloons over 8 million, which is the number Abbott gave during Monday's bill signing.
Crucially though, "encounters" by Customs and Border Protection also includes expulsions under Title 42. CBP data shows that 2.4 million people that were expelled from the country during Biden's time in office are counting towards the number of border encounters.
Actual Apprehensions at the border under Title 8 that were not deemed inadmissible or considered legal asylum claims through the Office of Field Operations only amounted to 3.26 million during Biden's time in office according to the data.
That number also does not take into account people who repeatedly cross the border. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, "people can cross and be apprehended, or make it through, multiple times." Considering that, we cannot determinae that the number number of individual people that have crossed the border illegally comes anywhere close to the 8 million number Abbott suggests.
Reichlin-Melnick said the exact number of migrants who have crossed into The U.S. illegally, while impossible to know, "is probably somewhere around 5.5 million to 6 million."
Claim 2: "The United Nations declared that the United States and Mexico is the deadliest land crossing in the entire world."
What we found: True.
In a September report citing the International Organization for Migration, the UN called the United States-Mexico border "the world's deadliest land route for migrants," saying there were at least 686 deaths and disappearances in 2022.
The report attributed nearly half of that number to "hazardous" desert conditions, and also went on to say the data represented "the lowest estimates available." For comparison, the UN report said the jungle border crossing between Panama and Colombia experienced 141 deaths of migrants in 2022.