The Biden administration, in a belated and late Friday night move, revealed illegal immigration attempts broke another record in September, as encounters with immigrants rushing the border are more than four times higher than under former President Donald Trump.
In revealing the numbers, immigration officials also said that so-called “got-aways,” or those who slipped in without being caught, reached 1 million under President Joe Biden.
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Key former border officials were quick to hit the administration and warn that the crisis will worsen because immigrants view the United States as weak.
“As bad as it has gotten, things will only get worse, and I fear what major catastrophe could come next. But make no mistake — responsibility for what has happened, and what will happen, lies squarely with this administration,” said Mark Morgan, the former acting Customs and Border Patrol commissioner and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Added Tom Homan, also a Heritage visiting fellow and former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director: “This is a shameful episode in our history, and the ones who are suffering are not the elites in their gated and secured Beltway communities. It’s the Border Patrol agents being overwhelmed on a daily basis. It’s the families who have been ripped apart losing a loved one to fentanyl or other drugs. And it’s the migrants themselves, who are worthless to the cartels once they’ve been paid. The next Congress better do something about it.”
Last night, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that encounters with illegal immigrants reached a record 227,000 in September.
For the fiscal year, there were 2,766,582 encounters, shattering past records also set under the Biden administration. In the last full fiscal year for Trump, there were 646,822 encounters.
Biden has shown little signs of eagerness to slow or even pay attention to the border crisis. This week, for example, he opened the door to letting mentally challenged immigrants win citizenship without passing basic English and U.S. civics tests.
Critics accused the administration of holding back the September numbers until Friday night to avoid a political fallout.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a hawk on the issue, hit Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for playing games with the release.
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“Secretary Mayorkas clearly hid these border numbers on behalf of President Biden and the Democratic Party for political purposes, which is why he released them late on a Friday night. How can anyone vote for a party that puts politics first and America last?” said spokesman R.J. Hauman.
He and Homan echoed calls from conservatives in Congress to begin impeachment hearings for Mayorkas.
“The time for excuses is over,” said Homan, adding, “the next Congress needs to take actual steps to hold this administration accountable for the chaos and carnage they have unleashed on our southwest border. That means starting with impeaching Secretary Mayorkas, who has helped implement this disastrous open-borders agenda and lied to the American people about it.”
