The United States has seen the worst year in border security history under the Biden administration, with record numbers of illegal immigrants and terrorism suspects, according to Homeland Security’s final numbers for fiscal year 2023.
Customs and Border Protection delivered the shocking border numbers on Saturday.
2.1 million illegal immigrants were detected by Border Patrol agents.
Officers also encountered 1.1 million unauthorized migrants via land border crossings and airports.
Those border numbers are double the rate of 2022, marking a record for Biden.
Despite Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s attempt to try to convince illegal immigrants to schedule their arrivals to take the pressure off the Border Patrol agents, the overall flow continues to rise unabated.
The Washington Times reported:
Troy Miller, acting commissioner at CBP, insisted his agency is on top of things.
“CBP will continue to remain vigilant, making operational adjustments as necessary and enforcing consequences under U.S. immigration law,” he said in a statement announcing the grim new numbers.
The numbers cover the period from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023.
During that year, the border saw ebbs and flows as Mr. Miller and Mr. Mayorkas tried to fine-tune their policies.
After a January reset, the numbers dipped but quickly shot up again. The same thing repeated in May, with another reset, another lull and then a resurgence.
September ended with one of the worst single months on record, with the Border Patrol tallying 220,323 illegal immigrant apprehensions.
Officers at the ports of entry recorded another 121,069 encounters with inadmissible migrants, which is the second-worst month on record, just slightly trailing August by about 600 people.
Things were bad on several critical yardsticks.
CBP reported seizing 27,000 pounds of fentanyl, or nearly double last year’s record and more than five times the rate of 2020, the last year under President Trump.
Authorities believe that increases in seizures track with an increase in the overall flow, so if more are caught, it means more is getting through.
The terrorism suspect numbers are also deeply concerning at a time when worldwide threats are increasing.
Border Patrol agents detected 169 people at the southern border whose identities were flagged in the Terrorist Screening Data Set, better known as the government’s terrorist watchlist.
That’s more people in one year than the previous six years combined, which is as far back as the data goes.
By way of comparison, just 11 terrorism suspects were nabbed at the southern border during the entire Trump years.
READ: James Woods: Hamas Terrorists Already in US Thanks to Biden’s Open Border
