Border encounter numbers were released even later than usual this month but the result is about a 27% jump from July to August. The July total was 183,494 and in August there were about 50,000 more encounters for a total of 232,972. That figure has been higher on two occasions this fiscal year and also twice last fiscal year but I think that’s it. Even going back twenty years, it’s one of the highest totals ever recorded and this is after the Biden administration’s shift to a new program designed to reduce the influx.

You know it’s bad when even the NY Times is writing about how bad it is.

Despite new border barriers and thickets of razor wire, risk of deportation and pleas for patience, a resurgent tide of men, women and children is not waiting. Driven by desperation, families and individuals are pushing across the southern border and past new efforts by the Biden administration to keep migrants waiting until they secure hard-to-get appointments to enter the nation with permission.

The influx is creating a humanitarian and political crisis that stretches from packed migrant processing facilities in border states to major American cities struggling to house and educate the new families…

“If you don’t take risks, you cannot win,” said Daniel Soto, 35, who crossed with his mother on Tuesday after they sold their car, restaurant and house in Lima, Peru, betting their entire fortune of $25,000 on a weeklong journey to the border near Tijuana.

That last paragraph is an indictment of our broken border system. This isn’t someone trying to escape persecution. This person owned a home, a business, a car. This is someone playing the odds they know are in their favor. The word is out that now is a great moment to try your luck at the US border slot machine.

The Biden administration also allowed nearly 500,000 Venezuelan migrants who are already in the country to seek work permits and protection from deportation. The administration yielded to pressure from leaders in New York, where the recent arrival of more than 100,000 migrants in New York City has overwhelmed shelters and strained resources. Though the Biden program doesn’t apply to new arrivals, it touched off debate about whether the action would encourage more people to migrate.

As Biden himself might say, ‘C’mon, Jack!’ It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how news about half a million Venezuelans getting work authorization is going to play in South America. But many Americans just keep pretending the problem here is the smugglers who are lying to people. Just look at these two paragraphs:

Migrants like Mr. Soto and his mother are arriving on a tailwind of stories of friends and relatives who reached New York or Chicago months earlier. Many also believe false claims from smugglers and social media that migrants would definitely be able to remain in the United States if they could make it in…

Thousands of migrants who do cross the border successfully are being deported shortly after they arrive, based on factors that include their home countries, available flights, and the discretion of border officials. But others file asylum claims when they face deportation in immigration court, and are allowed to remain in the United States while they wait for their cases to wind through immigration court, a process that can take years.

Anyone else see the problem? You claim asylum and you “are allowed to remain in the United States.” How long? The author knows this but doesn’t say. The average wait is about seven years! So, is it really a false claim that if you can make it in you can stay? Or is that a pretty accurate summary of the reality. It’s not going to be true for everyone of course. Some people will get deported. But a massive number arriving this year will not be. They’ll get a free ticket good for many years living in the US and they’ll just never leave.

This incredible offer is appealing to millions of people and that’s why the numbers keep going up. The Biden administration keeps dragging out the monthly reports until a Friday afternoon that suits them but we’ve already got a hint how this month, September 2023, is going thanks to a leak from the president of Mexico.

U.S. border authorities encountered more than 142,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in the first half of September, according to data shared by Mexico’s president, a tally on pace to match or even surpass previous monthly highs.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shared the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures during a morning press conference and proposed a visit to Washington in November to discuss migration and other issues.

So we’re probably on track for another 50,000 increase this month. If so, it will be a new monthly record and the Border Patrol will have to add another segment to the y-axis of its border encounters graph, which currently tops out at 250,000. That’s also going to result in a final tally of 2.5 million border encounters for fiscal year ’23, another record high.

There are lots of blue state governors and mayors screaming at the Biden administration that they can’t keep this up, not to mention all of the red state governors and mayors who’ve been saying the same thing for a while. Today, Ross Douthat takes a look at what this could mean for the future.

For decades, liberal jurisdictions have advertised their openness to migrants, while relying on the sheer difficulty of international migration and restrictions supported by conservatives to keep the rate of arrivals manageable, and confine any chaos to the border rather than the metropole…

The world has shrunk, and there is no clear limit on how many people can reach the Rio Grande. So what’s happening this year will happen even more: The challenges of mass arrivals will spread beyond the border, there will be an increased demand for restrictions even from people generally sympathetic to migrants, but the sheer numbers will make any restrictions less effectual…

In a sense you might distill the challenge facing liberals to a choice: Take more responsibility for restricting immigration, or get used to right-wing populists doing it for you…

Most likely there will be neither a punitive end to the crisis nor a successful humanitarian means of managing it. There will be a general rightward evolution, a growing tolerance for punitive measures (“Build the wall” could be a liberal slogan eventually), that has some effect on the flow of migration — but doesn’t prevent it from being dramatic, chaotic and transformative, on the way to whatever new world order may await.

This seems pretty plausible to me. We’re reaching a point where controlling this influx may not be possible even if the left is nearly as eager to stop it as the right. Will we see 3 million more migrants arriving in FY ’24? What is the Biden plan for dealing with this?