by Daniel Stefanski | Dec 13, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The Tucson Border Sector continues to attract a record number of illegal immigrants.
Late last week, John Modlin, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, reported that there were 18,900 apprehensions in his sector in just one week.
Ali Bradley, a Network Correspondent for NewsNation, highlighted that this eyepopping number was an increase over the previous week’s record of 17,500 for the sector.
Bradley also reported that most of these aliens have been “entering illegally through cuts in the wall in Lukeville.” Lukeville has become the epicenter of the border crisis in recent months, with thousands of individuals pouring through openings in the border fence, which have largely been procured by smugglers on the Mexican side.
Another journalist, Bill Melugin from Fox News, shared CBP’s revelations that “an average of 5,000 illegal immigrants are being released into the US every day, and that there were 670,000 known gotaways recorded in FY’23” in addition to “150+ countries encountered since 10/1.”
Arizona Legislators have long been outraged at the lack of action on the border, and the reactions to this fresh round of numbers were no different. House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci wrote, “Enough is enough with this border shit show. It’s time Arizona grants arresting powers, & the authority to carry, to all 5000 Arizona National Guard @ the border. Take over border duties with local Sheriff’s. Arrest, load them up, and deport them immediately. 10th Amendment!!!”
Representative Joseph Chaplik stated, “Democrats don’t care. Where are they in AZ calling for this to stop? Doing something in a week from now doesn’t help. Damage is done.”
The skyrocketing apprehensions have created chaos and alarm bells throughout government at all jurisdictions, in large part, due to what law enforcement isn’t encountering. Thanks to CBP agents being pulled off the lines to help process overwhelming numbers of arrests, cartels and smugglers can run ‘gotaways’ and deadly drugs – including loads of fentanyl – through other, unmanned areas. In the past fiscal year, a record number of suspected terrorists were apprehended at the border (169), leading many to question how many other dangerous people are slipping through the cracks and into the interior of the homeland.
Officials also have seized a rising amount of drugs at the open border, which according to reports, may only be 5-10% of the total numbers being smuggled into the United States. The Tucson Sector is one of the nation’s most prolific drug smuggling corridors.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 25, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be a hotspot for illegal immigration.
This past week, the U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent for the Tucson Border Sector, John R. Modlin, posted his weekly review of stats, showing the efforts of the men and women working under him.
Chief Modlin highlighted the following from his border sector that week:
- 14,300 Apprehensions
- 300 lbs of Fentanyl
- 183 Federal Criminal Cases
- 33 Rescues
- 15 Human Smuggling Events
- 7 Narcotics Events
- 2 Firearms Seized
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be one of the nation’s busiest regions, keeping agents on their toes as they seek to restore some semblance of order on the ground. In the first month of Fiscal Year 2024, October, this sector reported over 55,000 encounters of illegal immigrants, which was a 140.8% increase over the previous year’s numbers that month (22,938). Tucson Sector Officials recorded almost 374,000 arrests during the recently completed fiscal year.
These numbers, already significantly high for a sliver of the U.S.-Mexico border, do not represent the number of ‘gotaways’ escaping detection and making their way around the interior of America’s homeland. Nor do these figures fill in another major gap of the border crisis, which is the rampant drug smuggling that occurs all throughout the border – but especially in the Tucson sector. Drug cartels and smugglers occupy the time of border agents with thousands of arrests per day, while running drugs and ‘gotaways’ through other unmanned corridors. These dangerous factors of the porous border continue to haunt law enforcement at all levels as they attempt to do everything they can to protect innocent men, women, and children from harm.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 4, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The crisis at the southern border continues to wreak havoc on law enforcement and local communities and to invite a growing number of concerns over the security of the nation.
John Modlin, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, posted on “X” that border agents based in the Three Points Station had recently “encountered approximately 2,500 migrants near San Miguel, Arizona.”
Chief Modlin added that there was a group of 1,000 aliens included in the total number for the weekend.
The Tucson Border Sector is one of the nation’s most active when it comes to illegal immigration, with over 373,000 encounters of migrants taking place in the just completed 2023 Fiscal Year. This number represented almost a fifty percent change from Fiscal Year 2022, when officials reported almost 252,000 apprehensions.
Though the encounters, arrests, and processing of these migrants have kept border agents extremely busy throughout the year, these numbers are not all they – or other officials – must worry about. The Tucson Sector has seen a growing number of ‘gotaways’ – migrants who successfully evade arrest and whose identities and motives are largely unknown. This sector is also a significant vein of drug trafficking for smugglers and cartels, who can largely operate without too much opposition when agents are tied up with a record number of apprehensions.
In Fiscal Year 2023, border officials encountered 2,475,669 migrants illegally attempting to cross into the United States across all sectors. This historic number broke the previously set record in 2022 (2,378,944). During President Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House, law enforcement has apprehended 6.2 million migrants at the southern border, as well as 1.7 million reported ‘gotaways.” Included in the number of FY23 apprehensions were the arrests of 169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist – also a top annual number in the history of CBP statistic-keeping.
The Tucson border chief ended his post about the recent apprehension of thousands of migrants over the past weekend, writing, “Tucson Sector agents continue to work tirelessly addressing the migrant surge across the southwest border.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Corinne Murdock | Oct 26, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Border Patrol agents are reporting encounters and apprehensions of large groups of hundreds of single adult illegal immigrants from across the globe.
Over the weekend and within a span of three hours, Tucson Sector agents apprehended two groups totaling 303 migrants representing 18 different countries. Most were single adults, and appeared to be males.
Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens reported the apprehension of seven felons over the weekend. The men involved had criminal pasts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, lewd acts with a child, mayhem or rape and burglary, assault with a weapon, alien smuggling, domestic violence, and possession or intent to deliver drugs.
The Hamas attack on Israel and ongoing conflict may or already has caused further strain on the border crisis. The Daily Caller obtained an internal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) memo dated Oct. 20 warning of a potential increase of budding or active terrorists aligned with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or Hezbollah crossing the southern border.
“San Diego Field Office Intelligence Unit assesses that individuals inspired by, or reacting to the current Israel-Hamas conflict may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the Southwest border,” said the memo. “Foreign fighters motivated by ideology or mercenary soldiers of fortune may attempt to obfuscate travel to or from the US to or from countries in the Middle East through Mexico.”
For the 2023 fiscal year (October 2022 through September) there were over 2 million illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border. That included a 27 percent increase in criminal or wanted illegal immigrants by Border Patrol: over 15,200 this year so far, compared to over 12,000 last year. Of those, nearly 1,000 had outstanding arrest wants or warrants.
That also includes an 18.6 percent increase in criminal or wanted illegal immigrants by the Office of Field Operations (OFO): over 20,100 so far this year, up from nearly 17,000 last year and 6,500 in 2021. This year’s total is nearly double that of the average Trump administration OFO year.
Recidivism has increased from 7 percent in fiscal year 2019 to 26 percent in fiscal year 2020 and 27 percent in fiscal year 2021.
There were also 169 FBI terror watchlist individuals encountered at the southern border for the 2023 fiscal year, nearly doubling last year’s record of 98 and greater than the previous six fiscal years combined.
These numbers are likely a significant undercount. There have been around two million gotaways over the past two years of the Biden administration. Gotaways refer to those detected but not encountered or apprehended.
Owens revealed that there were at least over 18,000 known gotaways in the first 16 days of this fiscal year (2024, which runs from this October through next September).
“These are individuals whose identities & purpose we do not know,” said Owens. “That is why you need every Border Patrol agent to be in the field and on patrol.”
The number of gotaways reached 23,000 as of Monday, per CBP confirmation to Fox News.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 22, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A high-ranking Border Patrol official is sounding the alarm about the number of ‘gotaways’ in the month of October.
This week, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens posted on “X” that “over 18,000 gotaways” have been known to have escaped detection from law enforcement “in the first 16 days of Fiscal Year 2024.”
Chief Owens added that “these are individuals whose identities and purpose we do not know.”
The 2024 fiscal year just began this month of October. Ali Bradley, a National Correspondent for NewsNation, reported that there were “roughly 670,000 ‘gotaways’ for Fiscal Year 2023.”
During President Joe Biden’s three-year (and counting) tenure in the White House, there have been more than 1.7 million estimated ‘gotaways’ at the border, compared to just over 415,000 ‘gotaways’ for former President Donald J. Trump’s four years in office. Border officials and experts have varied theories and opinions on how to estimate groups of ‘gotaways’ – especially since some are known to cover their tracks, which are key to Border Patrol’s approximations in the field. The actual number of ‘gotaways’ could be much higher than the reports.
‘Gotaways’ could pose a serious danger to the homeland of America because, as Chief Owens stated, their identities and purpose for migrating to the United States are unknown. However, these ‘gotaways’ aren’t the only concern for border officials and local law enforcement.
With the rising tensions and violence in the Middle East this month, more attention has been given to the apprehensions of aliens crossing America’s border illegally from ‘special interest countries,’ which, according to a definition from the Department of Homeland Security, is “a non-U.S. person, who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests.” Bradley also reported this week that there were more than 76,000 migrants from ‘special interest countries’ arriving in the United States during the just-completed fiscal year.
Apprehensions of suspected terrorists have also created major fears for law enforcement and elected officials alike, who have seen those numbers drastically increase over the past few years. In the first eleven months of Fiscal Year 2023, officials encountered 151 individuals between ports of entry, who were flagged on the Terrorist Screening Dataset, compared to 98 in FY 2022 and 15 in FY 2021.
The counts of ‘gotaways’ and apprehensions of suspected terrorists and migrants from ‘special interest countries’ aside, the situation at the border has continued to spiral out of control on all fronts. Official numbers from the month of September have not been released as of Friday afternoon, but earlier this month, Fox News reported over 260,000 apprehensions for that month. If those numbers are accurate, which they usually are, that would put the number of apprehensions at the Southwest border for FY 2023 at just under 2,500,000 – an increase over FY 2022, which was a significant jump from FY 2021.
In Chief Owens’ communication about the number of ‘gotaways,’ he also writes, “That is why you need every Border Patrol agent to be in the field and on patrol” – something that the beleaguered and overwhelmed agency hasn’t been able to institute for the better part of the past decade with the exponential rise of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
