Border Patrol: 1.5 million ‘gotaways’ on Joe Biden's watch

FPI / March 17, 2023

On Joe Biden’s watch, about 1.5 million illegal aliens crossed the open U.S. southern border and managed to elude immigration authorities, according to testimony from Border Patrol chief Raul L. Ortiz. This brings the total number of migrants over the southern border to six million since 2021.

Along with the 1.3 million successful “gotaways” who were spotted by Border Patrol agents and surveillance systems, another 200,000 untracked migrants made it into the U.S., Ortiz told a hearing in McAllen, Texas on Wednesday organized by the House Homeland Security Committee.

Last year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has operational control of the border,

On Wednesday, committee chairman Mark Green asked Ortiz: "Does DHS have operational control of our entire border."

Ortiz responded: “No sir.”

Ortiz was asked by North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop if the changes in policy by the Biden administration to release migrants into the interior of the U.S. rather than detain and release was the driver of the crisis.

Ortiz responded by saying that "you have to have capacity, and you have to have consequences."

"And I still hold true that we have some policies in place where we need to ensure that the men and women out there patrolling the border, investigating these criminal cartels are actually allowed to do their job each and every day," he said.

"And their job is to detain or remove illegal immigrants," Bishop asked.

"Yes sir," Ortiz replied.

In addition to the “gotaways,” 2.7 million migrants have been allowed through the border since January 2021.

“That inflow adds up to 4.2 million, or more than one migrant for every one of the 3.7 million U.S. births in 2022,” Breitbart’s Neil Munro noted.

“The southern flood is in addition to the annual inflow of roughly one million legal migrants and roughly 750,000 short-term and long-term temporary workers. Those two pipelines delivered at least 2.5 million new migrants into the United States, on top of the 3.5 million southern migrants,” Munro added.

“The resulting tsunami of roughly six million migrants in 2021 and 2022 created a so-called ‘demand shock’ that inflated the costs of housing, used autos, and groceries for hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Free Press International
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