Illegal Immigration Is Up Yet Again

Today brings some bad news for Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Border apprehensions were up yet again in May:

It turns out that bluster and threats will apparently scare people away for a few months, but after that you need actual policies to keep the numbers down. Unfortunately, Trump’s idea of “policy” is to scream at his Secretary of Homeland Security:

Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, told colleagues she was close to resigning after President Trump berated her on Wednesday in front of the entire cabinet for what he said was her failure to adequately secure the nation’s borders, according to several current and former officials familiar with the episode….Mr. Trump’s anger toward Ms. Nielsen, who was sitting several seats to his left at the meeting, was part of a lengthy tirade in which the president railed at his cabinet about what he said was its lack of progress toward sealing the country’s borders against illegal immigrants, according to one person who was present at the meeting.

That was last month, and now things are even worse. Nielsen is really in for it now.

BY THE WAY: If you’re wondering why other sources say that border apprehensions were “over 50,000” last month, it’s because that number includes people who present themselves at ports of entry and are turned away. The numbers in my chart are solely people who are apprehended after crossing illegally into the United States.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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