EXCLUSIVE — In just 48 hours, authorities have encountered almost as many immigrants illegally attempting to enter the United States from Mexico as in entire months during the Obama and Trump administrations.
United States Customs and Border Protection data revealed that federal law enforcement encountered 26,751 immigrants Monday and Tuesday amid the unprecedented surge, the Washington Examiner learned Wednesday.
DECLINING SITUATION AT SOUTHERN BORDER UPS ANTE ON SENATE IMMIGRATION TALKS
On Monday, CBP employees encountered 14,509 illegal immigrants, followed by 12,242 on Tuesday.
Border Patrol agents who work between the land ports of entry made the large majority of arrests, while Office of Field Operations officers who inspect people at ports barred some immigrants who sought admission but did not have legal documents.
“These are only the subjects that were imputed into the system,” said the CBP employee who provided the data, who asked to remain anonymous. “The numbers should be larger due to us only able to transport and input so many people a day. There’s no telling how many people are still waiting at the river.”
The border crisis that began shortly after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 has resulted in an average of nearly 200,000 encounters per month or an average of 6,666 immigrants encountered per day.
The nearly 27,000 encounters in two days are not far off from the 34,243 total encounters in the entire month of December 2015. The past 48 hours are higher than six months during former President Donald Trump’s first year in office before the coronavirus pandemic and border restrictions.
The regional leadership for Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector, which comprises over 55,000 square miles in Texas, said agents have arrested 9,957 immigrants who crossed the Rio Grande illegally between Saturday evening and Tuesday evening.
As of Tuesday evening, approximately 2,400 immigrants had been detained outside between two international bridges. Another 5,000 immigrants had been processed and were in federal custody.
Across the country, CBP had 27,159 immigrants in custody and encountered a total of 14,127 immigrants at the southern, northern, and coastal borders as of Wednesday morning.
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CBP officials said in a statement that large groups of immigrants were being transported through Mexico to the U.S. southern border for the purpose of overwhelming Border Patrol and guaranteeing immigrants are released into the U.S. due to the government’s inability to detain everyone.
“These smugglers are recklessly putting migrants into harm’s way: in remote locations across the border, onto the tops of trains, or into the waters of the Rio Grande River,” Troy Miller, CBP’s senior official performing the duties of the commissioner, said in a statement. “We continue to go after the smugglers and are implementing new measures to impose consequences on transportation companies including bus and van lines used by smuggling organizations and nefarious actors to move migrants through northern Mexico and to our southwest border.”
