The United States, under the Biden administration, has endured the worst border crisis in the nation’s history. Since 2021, there have been more than 9.2 million encounters of inadmissible aliens nationwide and over 7.6 million encounters at the Southwest border. These numbers do not include “got-aways,” the term the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers use to refer to aliens who are detected entering the United States illegally, but ultimately not apprehended. As of March 2024, at least 1.8 million known got-aways have evaded U.S. Border Patrol under this administration’s policies.
The illegal immigration crisis is not limited to the Southwest border. Encounters at the northern border in March of FY 2024 increased 716% compared to March FY 2021. In the Swanton Sector, specifically, encounters reached their highest total on CBP record at 1,109 in the month of March 2024 alone – a 2,897% increase compared to March 2021 and a 46% increase compared to March 2023.