U.S. Customs and Border Protection released monthly border apprehension data on Friday, which said that “statistics show lowest southwest border encounters in nearly four years,” while the agency also claimed illegal border crossings were down by 34 percent from June to July, noting that the drop is due to a proclamation issued by President Joe Biden in June.

Troy Miller, a senior official performing the duties of the CBP Commissioner, said recent Biden-Harris policies led “to the lowest number of encounters along the southwest border in more than three years.”

Yet, in spite of these very recent dips in illegal crossings, the total number of apprehended illegal border crossers had exceeded 10.5 million, with two months remaining in the fiscal year, which concludes on September 30, The Center Square reported. “That number excludes 2 million gotaways, those who illegally entered and evaded capture, bringing the total number to more than 12.5 million,” the outlet noted further, citing federal statistics.

The subject of illegal immigration has become a top issue for the 2024 election. Less than two months after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office, he assigned her the task of dealing with what had already become an epidemic of illegal border crossings, a job she failed at miserably, given the numbers cited by The Center Square.

The news outlet went on to report that the 12.5 million figure exceeds the populations of 45 states. If illegal border crossers were a state, they would rank as the sixth most populous, ahead of Illinois.

Also, the figure has increased from surpassing the populations of 43 states in March and 23 states in June 2022, when The Center Square first started comparing these numbers to state, county, and country populations. No other presidential administration in U.S. history has reported anything close to 12.5 million in a single term, let alone across multiple terms.

Since fiscal 2021, the total number of apprehended illegal border crossers has reached 10,522,029, not including the two million gotaways. For comparison, Illinois has an estimated population of 12,516,863.

The outlet added:

As The Center Square has reported every month since early 2021, after President Joe Biden took office, the number of illegal border crossers increased.

The publicly reported CBP apprehension data excludes gotaways, the tens of thousands identified as “inadmissible” released into the country through a CBP One phone app every month, and the tens of thousands released through parole programs created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. More than a dozen of the programs were identified as illegal by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and used as evidence to impeach Mayorkas in February.

The CBP apprehension data total also excludes the hundreds of thousands brought in through parole programs from eight specific countries, including after the administration opened processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala to facilitate entry to the U.S.