The number of illegal immigrants who crossed the US southern border over the past year could be close to 12 million, former President Trump has claimed in an interview for Fox News on Sunday.
US Customs and Border Patrol informed last month that the total number of encounters for fiscal year 2021 has topped 1.7 million – surpassing the 2000 record of 1.64 million encounters – but Trump stressed that people should multiply times seven to get the real number of illegal immigrants that come in the United States totally unchecked.
Without elaborating on where he got the “x7” figure, he continued by underscoring that the US would have more than 10 million people coming over a two-year period, after which the country can never be the same.
Pointing that the border wall he wanted to build on the border with Mexico, the construction of which has been halted by the Biden administration in January, would’ve stopped the illegals, Trump noted that the latest migrant caravan from Guatemala currently making its way through is “the biggest anyone’s ever seen.”
Trump characterised these immigrants as rough people and accused them of bringing drugs into the United States, especially the extremely dangerous fentanyl, stressing that the numbers on fentanyl have gone up ten-fold.
According to last month’s CBP’s reports, that fentanyl seizures on the southern border had shot up from just two pounds between 2012-2013 to over 7,200 pounds in the first eight months of 2021, or thousands of percentage points over the past decade.
Customs and Border Patrol’s (CBP) agents reported in mid-October they have encountered 192,000 migrants during September, 61% of which were immediately expelled back into Mexico or their nation of origin.
Some of the immigrants were temporarily detained with only small numbers- including families and children- being allowed into the country or provided temporary housing.
CBP’s leaked documents, on the other hand, showed that since March 2021, more than160,000 immigrants had been released into the US, most of them on “notices to report” to immigration authorities.
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