Border authorities have apprehended 1 million illegal immigrants in FY2023

U.S. border authorities have had to deal with more than one million illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border so far in fiscal year 2023, which began on October 1. Gloria Chavez, chief of the Rio Grande Valley border sector, announced last Monday that agents had reached one million encounters with illegals, predominately at night. Attempts by illegal immigrants trying to reach the United States have increased in recent years to as much as five times the numbers previously recorded, for example, in 2020. In that fiscal year, Customs and Border Guards recorded 400,000 apprehensions of illegals, a figure that ballooned to 1.6 million in 2021 and 2.2 million in fiscal year 2022. The fact that from last October to February the number of encounters has already reached one million has set off alarm bells among border authorities who believe that by the end of this fiscal year the number of immigrants detained and registered will be more than three million.

This record comes a week after Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz admitted to Congress that he had lost operational control of the U.S. southern border. He also reminded lawmakers that he did not agree "with President Biden's decision to finish building the border wall in 2021," and that there are many sectors of the border that are "unsafe because they face an increasing number of attempted illegal entries every day." "In five of the new sectors of the southwest border we have seen an increase in legal arrivals that has strained our border patrols and forced them to move to other locations in order to make apprehensions, and this in turn has led immigrants to seek new routes," Ortiz assured the lawmakers.

However, the Biden Administration insists that the migration crisis has reached its peak and already speaks of a decrease in the number of encounters with immigrants by the authorities in January and February. And he gives as an example the figure that in February 2023, detentions of illegals were 128,877, the second lowest month since February 2021.