More than 600,000 people entered the United States illegally without being apprehended by border agents during fiscal year 2023, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday.
Mayorkas revealed the number during a hearing on national security on Capitol Hill, where he pointed out that refugees have been a problem at the border for “decades of years.”
“The fugitive phenomenon is something that has been a challenge for the Department of Homeland Security for decades,” said the Biden-appointed secretary.
Shockingly, he added: “In fact, it’s a powerful example of a broken immigration system.”
Customs and Border Protection figures released since the financial year ended Sept. 30 show 900,000 migrants have been allowed into the country legally along the southwest border under humanitarian parole, allowing them to pursue asylum applications.
When the number is added to the number of Gotawas, it makes 1.5 million migrants who have crossed the border in the last year, many of whom are now straining services in major metropolitan cities including New York, Chicago, Denver and Washington DC
About 900,000 immigrants are allowed to enter the United States after being apprehended by the US Border Patrol in 2023. James Keivom
During Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R., Kansas) said the number of refugees alone since Biden took office in 2021 is 1.7 million people, a statistic supported by findings of the Republican Committee on Homeland Security and published last week.
Since the start of the new year, the numbers have not stopped, with CBP chief Jason Owens sounding the alarm, saying more than 1,000 people a day are still slipping over the border.
A US Border Patrol agent searches immigrants at the US-Mexico border on May 12, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. Getty Images
“This is an individual whose identity & purpose we do not know,” Chief Owens wrote on X.
“That’s why you need every Border Patrol agent to be in the field and doing patrols,” he said.
Since fiscal year 2024 began, Owens estimates that more than 18,000 refugees have successfully entered the US between October 1 and 16.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted on Monday that refugees have always been a border problem. AFP via Getty Images
As migrants continue to flow across the southern border, Arizona has found itself hit hard in recent weeks.
Over the weekend, Border Patrol agents in Pima County’s Tuscon Sector detained about 2,600 immigrants, bringing the total number of people detained there to 3,200, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
Pima County spokesman Mark Evans said they expect to see 800 to 900 immigrants released each day while they are processed.
US Senator Ron Johnson during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on threats to the United States, on Capitol Hill.REUTERS
“Those are the kinds of numbers we saw in late September and early October when we were in crisis,” he said.
Meanwhile, a group of about 5,000 migrants headed for the US border set off on foot from Tapachula, one of Mexico’s southernmost cities near the Guatemalan border, on Monday, heading for the border.
The group had waited in the city after applying for transit papers there, but left after failing to receive them.
Migrants crossing the US-Mexico border wait to be transported by US Customs and Border Protection officials. James Keivom
At the head of the column, the migrants carried a white cross painted with drops of red blood and the phrase “Containment is my death, liberation is life” written in Spanish.
On Tuesday they arrived at Huehuetán, after marching about 16 miles.
With Postal wire.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
