To go along with the record-shattering number of migrants flooding across the border illegally into the United States, a staggering 16 people holding slots on the terror watch list held by the FBI were stopped at the border between U.S. & Mexico this past month, reported border authorities.
As reported in data released by Fox News, these numbers raised the total level of such encounters along the southern border for this year to 69 already, which agents of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) expect to keep increasing and shoot past the record set in the last fiscal year of 98 total encounters.
Authorities with the Office of Field Operations for the CBP reported that the agency ended up dealing with encounters for close to 214 people sitting on the Terrorist Screening Database along both the northern and southern border ports of entry for the current fiscal year.
As of writing, the identities of the 16 aforementioned terror watch-list individuals have not been made public.
Throughout the fiscal year 2022, border authorities were able to apprehend roughly 380 such people.
When looking over the timeframe of 2017 through 2020, the news outlet reported that area authorities were able to catch eight members of the terror watch list between both ports of entry. For 2021, agents ran into 15 people that were marked on the list by the FBI.
This spike in arrests of those on the terror watch list along the borders seems to walk hand in hand with the massive surge of close to 4.9 million migrants who have crossed into the United States under the administration of President Joe Biden, As reported in data sets issued by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
CBP authorities have had run-ins with well over 2.3 million migrants for the fiscal year 2022, with more than 80,000 migrants flooding in through El Paso between August and December alone last year.
A report from the New York Post indicated that CBP authorities have managed to apprehend close to 130,000 people who cross the border illegally as of this past January and another 130,000 in February; the agency has attributed the change to a recently implemented set of measures.
"The new border enforcement measures kept February’s overall encounter numbers nearly even with January," explained Troy Miller, the Acting Commissioner of the CBP.
A report from Fox News indicated that the outlet was able to get its hands on this data just hours in the wake of Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz expressing to the members of the House Homeland Security Committee as part of a hearing held in McAllen, Texas, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not currently maintain operational control of the border.
Officials with the DHS reportedly stated that the agency enforces laws that secure the national border as a means to try and battle smugglers and their cartel backers.
"Despite inheriting a dismantled immigration system and facing unprecedented migration that is affecting nations throughout the Western Hemisphere, this administration has surged resources to the border, reducing the number of encounters between ports of entry, disrupting more smuggling operations than ever before, and interdicting more drugs in the last two years than had been stopped in the five years prior," a spokesperson stated to Fox News.