U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week admitted at a congressional hearing that 600,000 illegal “gotaways” crossed the border in 2023.
More than 3.2 million people illegally entered the U.S. in fiscal 2023 (ending September 30), the most in recorded U.S. history, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Illegal border crossers known as “gotaways” — immigrants who evade Border Patrol but are detected on another form of surveillance — brought the total to 3.97 million.
In mid-September, Arizona Border Patrol agents were encountering more than 9,000 illegal aliens during a single day. Those totals approached the record 10,000 individuals daily pouring into Arizona in May when COVID-era immigration restrictions ended.
In a 24-hour period, 7,400 immigrants crossing from Mexico into southern Arizona illegally surrendered to Border Patrol agents and were taken into custody, the New York Post reported in September.
“Another 1,700 migrants turned up at ports of entry seeking asylum the same day, overwhelming the available resources and leading Border Patrol agents to have to release immigrants into the streets of Arizona towns, federal law enforcement sources said,” the story noted.
There’s been a lot of overwhelming resources in Arizona border towns over the last month since the Biden administration began a program of “street releases” of illegal immigrants awaiting transportation to larger cities.
“It’s a situation that is created or at least sustained on the national level,” Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls told the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism for a story published last week in the Tucson Sentinel. “It should be taken care of by the federal government, particularly if the government is not going to try to take care of the situation where it should, across the border.”
Nicholls and other Yuma officials have testified to uncompensated costs the local hospital has had to bear for the treatment of migrants, among other expenses for the community, the piece notes. While Yuma has not had street releases recently, officials are still preparing for the possibility that they might resume as they have in other towns.
“That would be not a great thing to do at all. There’s too many humanitarian issues,” Nicholls told the publication.
In announcing last week that more than 600,000 gotaways poured into the United States last fiscal year without being apprehended by agents, Mayorkas complained of a “broken immigration system.”
Southwest border states like Arizona know that fact better than anybody. More so, the system has been smashed under a Biden administration that has recorded nearly 8 million encounters with illegal immigrants. The flow of illegals increased by 200 percent in Biden’s first year in office compared to the numbers under former President Donald Trump. They soared 400 percent last year compared to Trump’s last year in office.
Yet, the record numbers could be much higher.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) has warned that Border Patrol may be undercounting gotaways amid the humanitarian crisis at the border.
