Border Patrol observed but was unable to arrest more than 600,000 immigrants who illegally entered the United States over the past year, in addition to the 2 million people that agents were able to apprehend and arrest, according to a Biden administration official.
U.S. Border Patrol agents and cameras on the border observed and tracked 600,000 unidentified people who slipped into the country between October 2022 and September 2023, but overworked agents were unable to track down and apprehend everyone. Mayorkas defended the DHS's handling of the border and said the U.S. was experiencing an"unprecedented" number of displaced people across the Western Hemisphere and that the country's border crisis was not helped by the"broken immigration system" that Congress has not addressed.