THE LOWER NUMBERS AREN’T REAL: Smuggling cartels raking in cash despite lower border numbers.

The Biden administration has celebrated a drop in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to sneak across the border over the past couple of months. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has characterized the decline as a blow to the smuggling cartels that control the market.

Yet those who make the attempt are paying more, according to The Washington Times’ database of smuggling cases, which tracks payments in near-real time and which suggests that the cartels aren’t taking as big of a hit as Mr. Mayorkas would like.

A Mexican crossing into the Laredo area of Texas is paying an average of $9,500, up from about $7,400 earlier this year, before the end of the Title 42 border pandemic expulsion policy in May.

A Mexican sneaking into Arizona is paying an average of nearly $10,000, up from about $9,300.

Central Americans pay even more. Mr. Salazar-Estrada’s $17,000 payment is on the high side but by no means extraordinary. The Times has tracked several recent cases of Guatemalans paying 150,000 quetzals, or more than $19,100, to be smuggled into the U.S.

Those from farther afield can pay more, as the Chinese migrant’s case suggests.

Related: Number of migrant families with kids crossing U.S. border nearly triples in two months.

And: Biden’s Border Crisis Is As Bad As Ever, His Admin Is Just Better At Hiding It.