WASHINGTON, DC — Thursday, Congressman August Pfluger (TX-11) released a statement slamming the national security risk posed by the Biden Administration’s border policies, which have resulted in the highest number of migrant encounters for one month on record in history.

Rep. August Pfluger: “It continues to amaze me that over a million illegal migrants have entered this country completely undetected, yet President Biden and Democrats in Congress continue to pretend there is no risk to the safety of Americans. December was the worst month at the border ever. At least 17 known and suspected terrorists were apprehended among the over 250,000 apprehensions—not including gotaways. Still, the President continues to push his failed policies. Republicans in Congress are pressing forward with legislation to secure the border and block this flow of illegal migrants, drugs, and weapons into our country—it’s past time for the President to get on board.”

The House Committee on Homeland Security released the latest edition of the “Startling Stats” factsheet for December 2022. Download it here.

Key Facts:

• Since President Biden has been in office, there have been over 4.5 million migrant encounters at the Southwest border, in addition to over 1.2 million known gotaways who evaded U.S. Border Patrol agents in the last two years. This is larger than the population of Los Angeles, California, the second largest city in the United States.
• CBP had 251,487 migrant encounters along the Southwest border in December 2022—a 40% increase from the previous year—which includes 161,808 single adults, 77,088 family unit individuals, and 12,298 unaccompanied children.

In just the first three months of the fiscal year, 38 people whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist were stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. This total is more than the encounters in all FY17, FY18, FY19, FY20, and FY21 combined and is on track to exceed the disturbing 98 encounters in FY22.