U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 476,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border between ports of entry during the first seven months of this fiscal year. This is up from over 212,000 during the same period one year earlier.
In the first seven months of this fiscal year (October 2018 – April 2019), Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 476,000 migrants who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico Border between ports of entry, an official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told Breitbart News on Monday. Previous reports from CBP show that agents apprehended just over 212,000 during the first seven months of the previous fiscal year. This represents a 125 percent increase in total apprehensions over the previous year.
These numbers indicate that agents apprehended more than 115,000 in April 2019, an increase of 24 percent over last months record-setting numbers. The CBP officials said that about 33,000 of those April apprehensions occurred during the last 10 days.
Most concerning to the CBP official is the number of large migrant groups being apprehended — mostly in remote and desolate locations. Border Patrol officials define a “large group” as consisting of more than 100 migrants. So far this fiscal year, there have been 141 large groups apprehended after illegally crossing the border. These groups represent more than 22,000 people, the official stated.
More than 80 of the large groups were apprehended in what he described as remote locations in New Mexico and Arizona (El Paso and Yuma Sectors).
These large group apprehensions in remote locations shut down border security operations in a wide area as all available Border Patrol agents are consolidated to transport and process the migrants in the large groups, the CBP official stated.
More than 12,000 migrants required hospital care during the first seven months of this year, he explained. This compares to about 11,000 for all of the previous fiscal year.
The CBP official explained that it is not just the number of migrants being apprehended that make this a crisis. He said the demographics are much different. This year about 63 percent of the apprehensions are Family Unit Aliens (FMUA) and Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC). We have no consequence we can apply to these types of migrants, the official stated.
Due to court rulings and broken asylum laws, CBP began releasing “non-criminal” migrants and children directly to NGOs and to bus stations (daytime only). Since the new program began on March 19, Border Patrol agents released more than 30,000 migrants, the official stated.
The large number of border crossings has also put a strain on Border Patrol rescue capabilities. So far this year, agents carried out 2,200 rescue operations — 365 of those involved water rescues.
The CBP official stated that during one of these operations last week involving an overturned human smuggling raft, an infant and a toddler drowned and two others are still reported missing.
To put an end to the current crisis of Central American migrants crossing the border in record numbers, the Border Patrol official stated that Congress needs to revise the Flores decision that forces the release of migrant families after a 20-day detention and fix the Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act (TVPRA) signed in 2008 by President George W. Bush. This law prohibits returning Central American migrant minors to their home country without an immigration hearing on asylum.
The official said Border Patrol agents have about 1,000 migrant minors in custody on any given day.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.