OPINION:
President Biden is breaking records and making history on the southern border. But this is not good.
During this fiscal year, federal authorities encountered more than 1,746,119 undocumented migrants, a record for any fiscal year since 1960, according to reports from the Personalized Border Patrol.
To make matters worse, more than half a million migrants who crossed the US border illegally this fiscal year have successfully evaded authorities, according to a new report released by the Department of Homeland Security.
The department said there has been a monthly average of about 55,000 “runaways” (illegal immigrants who are detected by authorities who cross the border but evade capture) during fiscal year 2022, which began in October 1, 2021.
In a recent interview with The Federalist, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation said the actual number of escapes for this fiscal year is likely well over half a million.
“The 500,000 that are documented exist. But by leaving hundreds and hundreds of miles of border completely unpatrolled for days or weeks at a time, which is what’s happening right now because most agents are in the process, that number is very, very, very artificially low,” Scott said .
With two months left in this fiscal year, the FY22 total is already more than double the 389,155 known escapes that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there were last year during the fiscal year 21.
After Mr. While Mayorkas spoke at the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday and claimed the border was secure, some Border Patrol agents pushed back and said they are facing a tsunami of migrants crossing the border illegally.
“Hundreds of thousands crossing each month is not the definition of safe,” an agent told Fox News Digital last week. “They are liars and anyone who believes them is a fool.”
Since FY21, there have been a total of about 900,000 escapes, a number that far exceeds the population of the nation’s capital.
Despite the overwhelming number of escapees eluding authorities, the total is still only a fraction of the total number of migrants trying to cross the border. June was the fourth consecutive month that Border Patrol agents had more than 200,000 interceptions, according to agency reports.
Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials recently announced they are moving forward with a pilot program to release as part of an effort to track the tens of thousands of migrants released each month.
ICE officials say the new Secure Docket Card program will “modernize various forms of documentation provided to provisionally released non-citizens through a consistent, verifiable and secure card.”
While these measures are a step in the right direction to help authorities track migrants who are apprehended and released, the Biden administration should focus on this crisis where it begins, at the border, and give to the authorities what they need to ensure this would be escapes not “runs” in the first place.
