Thousands of migrants lined railroad tracks as a freight train passed about three hours south of Eagle Pass, Texas, in Piedras Negras, Mexico, waiting for a chance to jump aboard to the southern border, where they are expected to arrive in the coming days.
Border Patrol agents are already overwhelmed and dealing with unprecedented numbers of migrants, and according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources, migrant encounters topped 10,000 in a single day on Tuesday.
Last week, there were over 12,000 migrant encounters in a single day, breaking daily records and still at levels overwhelming agents on the ground.
In the Tucson and Del Rio Sectors, agents saw 3,000 and 2,700 encounters respectively, with both sectors more than 200% over capacity.
On Saturday, Fox reported that lawmakers were briefed by officials that over 5,000 illegal immigrants are currently being released into the U.S. each day, in addition to the 1,600 migrants who arrived at ports of entry and are being processed and released via the use of humanitarian parole each day under the CBP One app.
Agents are seeing migrants from over 150 countries, lawmakers were told. On Tuesday, sources said there were more than 190 Chinese nationals encountered in the San Diego sector, while there were more than 120 encounters of nationals from Guinea in the Tucson Sector.
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In FY23, agents saw record-breaking numbers, with 2.4 million encounters. Then, as FY24 kicked off, agents continued to see records broken in September and October.
There is little sign that the numbers are slowing, though typically they drop over the winter months.
The Tucson Sector, which has been at the center of the most recent migrant surge that has seen hundreds of mostly male adult migrants queued up against the border fence, agents are outmanned 200 to 1 in the field, officials said.
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The Biden administration has been calling for additional border funding from Congress with a $14 billion request, which includes funding for migrant care, costs related to expedited removal and help for cities. But that has been blocked so far as Republicans seek limits on releases into the U.S. by increasing asylum screening standards and reducing parole use — proposals at which some Democrats have balked.
The administration has said overall that it is dealing with a hemisphere-wide crisis and needs funding and immigration reform to fix what it says is a broken system. The administration has touted a significant expansion of “lawful migration pathways” while also claiming it has increased consequences for illegal entry in the wake of the end of Title 42 in May.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
