The press has been replete with reports of a major uptick in illegal border crossings in the past month. Customs and Border Protection published numbers today, giving us insight into the month of February.

Border Patrol apprehended 96,974 migrants attempting to enter the US illegally across the US southwest border in the month of February. This was almost three times the level of one year earlier and the highest since 2006, that is, during the Bush administration. It was far worse than any February under either the Obama or Trump administrations. Nor should these developments have surprised the Biden administration. The surge was not only foreseeable, we actually forecast it.

In our November 23rd note, I wrote

...the numbers suggest the border problem will continue to worsen as long as the current 'catch-and-boot' regime lasts, possibly through Q1 2021. If so, the apprehension numbers in the December to March period could once again be eye-popping and a policy priority -- or at least a policy headache -- for the incoming Biden administration.

Not only was this qualitative guidance, we forecast the numbers, which can be seen updated with today's CBP data on the graph below:

Reported apprehensions were even worse than our forecast, which itself might reasonably have been characterized as 'alarmist'. That the Biden administration has been caught unawares is frankly surprising. The Obama administration had problems with its own surge, and consequently these issues should not have been novel or unexpected for President Biden. Expect some entirely Trumpian, and fairly nasty, measures to be implemented in the next month or so to control the surge.

I need hardly reiterate that all this could be resolved in short order without draconian measures if the Biden administration would consider a market-based visa program.

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Meanwhile, inadmissibles remain at abnormally low levels, depressed by the ongoing covid pandemic.