More than 64,000 illegal immigrants evaded Border Patrol agents in October as agents made at least 205,000 migrant apprehensions, multiple Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources told Fox News — dealing another blow to claims by the Biden administration that the border is “secure.”
The data show there have been more than 64,000 recorded “gotaways” in October, an average of over 2,000 a day. That would be higher than the average in FY 2022 when there were nearly 600,000 gotaways overall, averaging about 50,000 a month.
The numbers also show that there have been at least 205,000 apprehensions by Border Patrol, compared to 159,113 last October and 69,032 in October 2020. It is believed to be the highest October number in DHS history.
That Border Patrol-only figure does not include those encountered at ports of entry by Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Field Operations – which averaged around 15,000 a month in FY 2022. That means the overall monthly number of encounters is expected to be higher than 205,000. There were 164,837 encounters overall in October last year and 227,547 encountered in September 2022, the last month of a fiscal year that saw a record 2.3 million migrant encounters overall.
CBP typically publishes data toward the end of the month, although it does not typically include numbers of “gotaways.” The high number of those who are known to have slipped past overwhelmed agents (and does not include those who evaded detection altogether) is likely to lead to further scrutiny of the claim made by multiple Biden administration officials that the border is “secure.”
Source: CBP
