- There were enough illegal immigrants caught and released into the country in 2023 to fill more than 17 Yankee Stadiums, according to federal data.
- Not a single year of encounters under the two previous presidential administrations came close to what federal authorities recorded in 2023, according to the data.
- “In retrospect, 2023 at the border was a progressively worse version of 2022,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The number of illegal immigrants caught and released into the country in 2023 would be enough to fill Yankee Stadium more than 17 times, according to federal data.
Border Patrol recorded more than 1.7 million encounters with migrants crossing the southern border illegally in 2023, with more than 824,000 released into the interior of the country with future court appearances, according to the data, which doesn’t account for December. Yankee Stadium has the capacity to hold 46,537 people, according to Ticketmaster.
Federal authorities at the southern border also seized more than 229,000 pounds of drugs, roughly 22,000 pounds of which were fentanyl. (RELATED: ‘Breaking Point’: Sanctuary City Mayors Beg Biden Admin For More Help In Addressing Migrant Crisis)
During the Obama and Trump administrations, not a single year reached one million encounters, according to federal data.
“In retrospect, 2023 at the border was a progressively worse version of 2022,” former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Biden continued to double down on his failed border policies, illegal immigration continued skyrocketing to unimaginable levels, the cartels made more money than most people can fathom with less risk than at anytime in history, Customs and Border Protection suspended legal trade and travel to decrease the time in custody for illegal aliens, and the US Border Patrol shut down checkpoints and deployed nearly zero proactive patrols.”
“Biden’s only response was to send Mayorkas and Blinken to Mexico and asks them to control their border,” he said.
TOPSHOT – US President Joe Biden walks along the US-Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Tom Homan, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director during the Trump administration, believes the onus is on the Biden administration, specifically Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, for the continued crisis at the southern border,
“We are almost three years into this administration and they continue to break records. Historic records of illegal crossings along with historic migrant deaths on US soil, historic number of terror watch list crossings, a record number of women and children being sex trafficked, and a record number of young Americans being poisoned by fentanyl that flows across the open border,” Homan told the DCNF.
The House Homeland Security Committee is preparing to conduct impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas early in the new year, a committee staffer recently told the DCNF.
“The Biden Administration is breaking records everyday and none of them are good. Enough. Time to impeach Mayorkas. No more excuses. This country needs action now,” Homan said.
Despite the record flows of illegal migrants across the southern border, ICE has left thousands of detention beds empty, according to the DCNF’s previous review of agency data. As of Dec. 11, ICE had seven individuals on average in custody each day at its processing center in Adelanto, California, where there is bed space for 640 people, according to agency data.
Court orders limit ICE’s use of bed space in the California facility to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
The situation is only expected to worsen in the coming year, J.J. Carrell, who served as a deputy patrol agent in charge for Border Patrol, told the DCNF.
“We have never experienced this type of invasion in the history of America,” Carrell said. “And when you look at the totality of the data, meaning Special Interest Aliens, Russian nationals, Chinese nationals, terrorists, criminal aliens, major cities crumbling, social welfare, states of emergencies, I believe that when we look back on 2023 from the viewpoint of 2024, I think 2023 is gonna look tame, and that’s scary. I think that should scare America.”
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