The nose of the U. S. Border Patrol called illegal immigration a national security threat, saying that the large number of known gotaways keeps him “up at day”.
Speaking with CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens warned that his company is often stretched thin, with 20, 000 officials protecting almost 2, 000 km at the southern border at all time.
“]Cartels ] dictate what the flow is going to look like”, Owens said. ” We respond to it, and we try and get out in front of it and refuse them the ability to use these areas, especially ones that we think are going to be unsafe for us and for the workers”.
Cartels will often give a group of migrants across the frontier, waited for border patrol to listen, and then take another group a few miles down the road, Owens said.
The biggest danger, he said, is to regional stability.
” We’re closing on a million comments this fiscal year alone”, Owens said. ” That amount is a large number, but what’s keeping me up at night is the 140, 000 known gotaways … border security is a great part of national security. And if we do n’t know who is coming into our country, and we do n’t know what their intent is, that is a threat”.
Former president Donald Trump has made improper immigration one of the decorations of his 2024 plan, saying that President Joe Biden has made the United States a “dumping surface” for different countries.
Owens said that people from at least 160 various states have crossed the border illegally this fiscal year, from parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia in addition to the Americas. The United Nations recognizes a full of 193 member countries in the world.
Trump has also alleged that different countries are pouring mental organizations, prison, and prison to give people across the U. S. borders. Owens said that what scares him is not knowing whether that’s accurate or not.
” I do n’t know if other countries are releasing people from jails, and those folks that got released are making their way up or not”, he said. ” I do n’t know what the numbers would be. It’s the mysterious that that terrifies me”.
Biden has countered responsible for the border issue by saying Republicans tanked a border surveillance expenses in order to keep the matter for Trump’s campaign, though Republicans pointed to certain policy provisions in explaining their opposition to the law.
Owens did say that he felt the vast majority of people crossing the border are “good”.
” I think they absolutely are by and large good people”, Owens said. ” I wish they would choose the right way to come into our country and not start off on the wrong foot by breaking our laws”.
Most people that border patrol encounters are fleeing terrible conditions at home or are economic migrants looking for a better way of life, he added, saying that “does n’t make them bad people”.
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” It’s just that they’re not being respectful of the laws that we’ve established as a country, and they’re actually putting the people in this country in harm’s way because they’re pulling the border security apparatus off of task”, he said.
The number of illegal immigrants encountered at the nation ‘s , borders , in February remained at the highest levels seen in national history, increasing slightly to more than a quarter million people encountered.
