A Border-State Democrat Said the Quiet Part Out Loud — ‘The Biden Administration Did a Bad Job at the Border.’

On June 28, 2026, on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said something most members of his party still avoid saying on camera: “The Biden administration did a bad job at the border.” It was not a slip. Kelly — a first-term Democrat from a state that sits on the line — has been distancing himself from former President Joe Biden (D)’s border record for years.

The admission matters because of who made it. When Republicans call the 2021–2024 surge a “crisis,” Democrats can wave it off as partisan framing. When a sitting Democratic senator from a border state uses the same word about his own party’s administration, the framing collapses. Kelly conceded he had to do “unpopular things” — and “unpopular things for being a Democrat” — to break with Biden on it.

This page lays out exactly what Kelly said, the official CBP numbers that sit behind the word “crisis,” and how the Biden-era peak compares with the current border. The point is not to relitigate every policy fight — it is to record, with primary data, that a Democrat closest to the problem agrees with the basic factual claim his party spent years resisting.

• ‘Bad job’ — Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), on ABC’s This Week, June 28, 2026, describing the Biden administration’s handling of the border · Source: The Hill
• ~8.7 million — Southwest land border encounters across FY2021–FY2024 under President Biden — the four highest single-year totals in CBP history · Source: CBP Southwest Land Border Encounters
• 2,475,669 — Southwest border encounters in FY2023, the single highest year ever recorded by CBP · Source: CBP
• Over 10 million — nationwide CBP encounters tallied during the Biden administration; the House Homeland panel projected the 10M mark in mid-2024 · Source: House Committee on Homeland Security
• ~2 million — known ‘gotaways’ — migrants detected crossing illegally but not apprehended — logged under Biden, a figure CBP and Border Patrol leadership concede undercounts the true number · Source: House Homeland; CBP
• ‘Unpopular’ — how Kelly described the political cost, inside his own party, of breaking with Biden on the border · Source: The Hill; Washington Times

Asked on This Week about criticizing leaders in his own party, Kelly did not hedge. “The Biden administration did a bad job at the border,” he said, according to The Hill. He grounded it in geography: “I am a border senator. I represent the state of Arizona, and this was affecting my constituents more than it was affecting, let’s say, Todd’s in Indiana.” The point was that the people he represents lived the consequences directly.

Reporters covering the interview described Kelly as saying the Biden administration created a “crisis” at the southern border with welcoming policies that effectively let undocumented migrants enter and stay rather than be turned back. Kelly framed his break as a matter of conscience and constituency, not calculation: “I wound up in a situation with them where I had to do some unpopular things, and I think unpopular things for being a Democrat.”

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Kelly is not a fringe critic or a Republican. He is a Democratic senator who won statewide in a swing state, sits on the Armed Services Committee, and was floated as a 2024 vice-presidential possibility. When a figure like that says his own administration mishandled the border, it removes the easiest rebuttal — that the criticism is just partisan noise. The factual claim and the messenger’s party affiliation no longer point in opposite directions.

This is also not new for Kelly. As far back as 2023, he publicly distanced himself from what he called Biden’s border “mess,” warned the administration against lifting Title 42 without a plan, and later backed a 2024 measure to sharply limit asylum at the border. The June 2026 remark is the bluntest version of a position he has held for years — that the policy, in his telling, “was not working.”

CBP data show why the word is defensible. Southwest land border encounters climbed every year after FY2020 and set records: roughly 1.73 million in FY2021, 2.38 million in FY2022, and a single-year record 2,475,669 in FY2023, before easing to about 2.14 million in FY2024. Add those four years and the Southwest border alone accounts for roughly 8.7 million encounters under Biden.

Counted nationwide — every port and sector — CBP encounters under the Biden administration exceeded 10 million, a threshold the House Committee on Homeland Security projected in May 2024. Beyond the people CBP caught are the ones it did not: roughly 2 million known “gotaways” were logged during the period, and Border Patrol leadership has conceded that figure undercounts the true total, since gotaways are only those detected on sensors or camera.

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The contrast is what makes the admission land. After President Donald Trump (R) returned to office and reimposed restrictive border measures, monthly Southwest encounters collapsed from the tens and hundreds of thousands seen at the Biden-era peak to a small fraction of that. CBP publicized record-low monthly totals through 2025 — in some months the lowest daily averages in the agency’s recorded history. Whatever one thinks of the methods, the raw flow numbers moved sharply.

Kelly has been careful to argue both halves at once: that the Biden approach failed and that the Trump approach, in his view, has gone too far on enforcement. That is a defensible distinction — but it does not soften the first half. On the underlying question of whether the previous administration managed the border well, a border-state Democrat’s answer is now on the record: no.

Kelly was candid about the cost. Breaking with Biden, he said, meant doing “unpopular things” within his own party. But he drew a sharp line between the two administrations on one point: he said he could speak freely to Biden about the border without fearing retribution, whereas under the current Trump administration the calculus is different — Trump, he noted, endorses primary challengers against Republicans who cross him, making in-party dissent far costlier on that side.

“I wound up in a situation with them where I had to do some unpopular things, and I think unpopular things for being a Democrat.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), ABC's This Week, June 28, 2026

That framing is itself a tell about the state of the immigration debate. A Democrat now finds it safer to criticize a Democratic administration on the border than to take certain positions against the Republican one. The border numbers gave him cover; his constituents gave him reason. Either way, the admission is the news — and the CBP figures behind it are not in dispute.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told a national audience that his own party’s administration “did a bad job at the border” and helped create a crisis there. The CBP record supports the characterization: roughly 8.7 million Southwest encounters and a record 2,475,669 in FY2023, more than 10 million nationwide, and some 2 million known gotaways under former President Joe Biden (D). Kelly says enforcement has since overcorrected under President Donald Trump (R)— but he is no longer arguing the first administration got it right. When the politician closest to the line concedes the point, the debate over whether there was a crisis is effectively over.

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