On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that well over 200,000 illegal aliens coming across the southern border have managed to completely evade Border Patrol and other border authorities since October.
The New York Post reports that an anonymous DHS official reported as many as 220,000 “gotaways” over the last four months, illegals who were never even stopped by Border Patrol. The official noted that the unusually high number came even during the winter season, which usually sees a slowdown of border crossings due to harsh weather conditions.
The 220,000 consists primarily of illegals who were spotted at some point on surveillance equipment, but were not actually stopped or confronted by federal personnel; with a number of other illegals sneaking across the border completely undetected, the actual number of gotaways is likely even higher.
Conversely, the number of illegals successfully stopped at the border, officially labeled as “encounters,” was approximately 153,941 in January of 2022; there were over 178,000 encounters in December and 173,000 in November.
By contrast, in January of 2021, that number was just 78,414. The DHS further revealed in a court filing that over 62,000 illegals were released in January.
The latest numbers further reflect the devastating impact of the Biden Administration’s open-borders policy, which Biden explicitly campaigned on in 2020. Then-candidate Biden repeatedly pledged to give numerous free, taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens, including healthcare, education, and housing. Shortly after he came to power, the rates of immigration skyrocketed and created a crisis on the southern border, with the administration repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the situation as a crisis.