The U.S. Border Patrol found 67 migrants in a box truck in West Texas. | By Gerald L. Nino, CBP, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security
The U.S. Border Patrol found 67 migrants in a box truck in West Texas. | By Gerald L. Nino, CBP, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security
The latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) shows that there are now 8,000 migrant encounters each day, with 2,000,000 arrests this year alone. Yet despite calls for more border agents, Democrats like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly have voted to hire massive numbers of new IRS agents.
Kelly was among those who voted down an amendment to the Inflation Reduction Act, which required the hiring of 18,000 new CBP agents before any new IRS agents were hired. Democrats voted down the measure proposed by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in August, according to Senate records.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, IRS would receive $80 billion to hire as many as 87,000 staff members in order to increase tax audits and monitoring on Americans, the Washington Free Beacon reported. That would more than double the agency's current employee roster, meaning the agency would "employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined," the story reported.
"Democrats would rather audit Americans than secure the border. When they passed their reckless spending bill, they voted against hiring more border patrol agents. Instead, they spent $46 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents," Senate Republicans said on Twitter on Sept. 15.
Biden Administration officials announced Sept. 19 that authorities have made more than 2,000,000 immigration arrests along the southern border during the past 11 months, the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that number.
The IRS currently has 78,661 full-time employees, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, that number would rise to 165,661. By comparison, the CBP employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents, the FBI employs around 35,000 people, the U.S. State Department employs 77,243 people and the Pentagon employs around 27,000, the Washington Free Beacon said.
According to CBP statistics, the agency had 203,598 migrants attempting to cross the border from Mexico in August. This puts agents on pace to make more than 2.3 million arrests during the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Immigration authorities have regularly reported the highest daily number of migrants entering the U.S. along the southwest border. The Department of Homeland Security reported that CBP officers were logging 8,000 "migrant encounters" per day as of Sept. 15.
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