The Strange Case of the 119,009 Missing Ukrainians
Or are they? CBP seemingly gives up the game on the White House’s “legal pathways”
By Andrew R. Arthur on February 24, 2023
Each month, CBP updates its “Nationwide Encounters” page, showing how many aliens the agency “encountered” in the prior month. “Encounters” in this context are the sum of illegal entrants apprehended entering illegally by Border Patrol agents plus aliens deemed inadmissible at U.S. ports of entry by CBP officers. Under the Biden administration, most of those CBP encounters have been Border Patrol apprehensions at the Southwest border. Reviewing the numbers since FY 2022, however, reveals that nearly 120,000 Ukrainians were "encountered", but are otherwise missing. Or, are they?
The Statistics. According to CBP, its officers and agents encountered 97,377 Ukrainians in FY 2022, and an additional 48,863 others in the first four months of FY 2023 — 146,240 in total.
Of that FY 2022 total, 25,364 were encountered at the Southwest border (585 Border Patrol apprehensions and nearly 25,000 Ukrainian nationals stopped at the Southwest border ports of entry), and 1,319 were encountered at the Northern border (five of whom were apprehended by agents and 1,314 deemed inadmissible by CBP officers at the ports of entry along that border). That equals 26,683 total land border encounters, and leaves 70,694 others unaccounted for last fiscal year.
In the first four months of FY 2023, CBP encountered an additional 48,863 Ukrainian nationals. Just 74 of them were stopped at the Southwest border (34 Border Patrol apprehensions and 40 aliens deemed inadmissible at the land border ports) and 474 were encountered at the Northern border (two apprehended, both in November, and 472 deemed inadmissible at the ports there). That’s a total of 548 encounters at the two land borders, and leaves 48,315 unaccounted for in FY 2023.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Strange-Case-119009-Missing-Ukrainians
