More than 1.3 million immigrants got away at US-Mexico boundary: Border chief
Anna Giaritelli
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Border Patrol is aware of 1.3 million immigrants who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, evaded arrest, and whose whereabouts are unknown.
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz testified before the House Homeland Security Committee at a hearing in McAllen, Texas, on Wednesday that since October 2022, agents had observed 385,000 noncitizens cross the southern border but were unable to pursue those people due to constraints responding to other groups of people smuggled.
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The new figure is in addition to 318,112 illegal immigrants observed between January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, and the end of fiscal 2021 that September.
Approximately 599,000 “gotaways” were recorded in 2022 for a grand total of 1,302,112 during the Biden administration.
Gotaway data has not historically been publicly released but started being shared in 2020 under the direction of former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott.
The Republican National Committee blasted out Ortiz’s admission in an email sent to supporters Wednesday.
“When Mayorkas and Biden insist the border is ‘secure,’ they are lying. Chief Ortiz told the Homeland Security Committee we do NOT have operational control of our border,” RNC Rapid Response Director Tommy Pigott wrote in an email.
Pigott also criticized Democrats who did not attend the field hearing in South Texas. Democrats also skipped out on a House Judiciary Committee hearing at the Arizona border.
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A senior Democratic aide told the Washington Examiner that Republicans on the committee had also refused to attend hearings in the past when Democrats had a majority in the House and determined when and where committee hearings would take place. One example cited in which Republicans did not show up was a hearing on domestic terrorism and antisemitism in October 2022 in New Jersey.
“It is unfortunate that committee Republicans were not forthcoming about the planning of this hearing,” ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in a statement. “This is not how the committee should operate and its further proof that the extreme wing of the Republican Party has taken over. It’s clear now that this hearing was planned as a partisan political stunt from the start and there’s no way Democrats would legitimize it with our presence.”