Southern border bulging

200K illegals again in Aug.

More than 200,000 illegal immigrant encounters were reported in August — the second consecutive month the number has exceeded that mark — in an extension of the border crisis that has plagued the Biden administration since its start.

There were 208,887 encounters last month, a Department of Homeland Security official told Fox News.

And while the total is down slightly from July’s more than 212,000 encounters, it’s still a 317 percent increase over August 2020, when there were 50,014 apprehensions and a 233 percent jump from August 2019, when 62,707 apprehensions were recorded.

Of the encounters in August, 49 percent involved single adults — down 7 percent from July.

Forty-four percent of the encounters resulted in expulsions under Title 42 guidelines on health protections begun during the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden White House.

In August, there were 18,847 encounters with unaccompanied children, down slightly from July, and 86,487 encounters with family units, a 4 percent jump from July.

The data provided to Fox News has not been released publicly by Customs and Border Protection.

President Biden has been criticized for rolling back or scuttling many of the immigration policies of former President Donald Trump since taking office in January, including the construction of the border wall and the Remain in Mexico program.

Last month, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling reinstating the program — officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols — and the Biden administration restored it with slight changes.

While shelving Trump’s policies, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been focused on the “root causes” of illegal immigration — violence, poverty and corruption in Central American countries.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was caught on video last month telling border agents that the situation at the border is “unsustainable” because the system can’t handle such large numbers of illegal immigrants.

“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said, ‘Look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,’ ” Mayorkas said during the meeting.

“We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue and our system isn’t built for it,” he said.