Second highest influx of illegals in any given year.
By Raif Karerat
During September, the final month of the fiscal year, nearly 10,000 unaccompanied minors and family unit members were apprehended illegally entering the U.S. through the southern border.
Specifically, the Border Patrol intercepted 4,476 unaccompanied minors and 5,273 family unit members.
This marks the second highest influx of undocumented immigrant families and unaccompanied youths in any fiscal year, according to new government data.
The year before still holds the record, in which Border Patrol apprehended 68,541 unaccompanied minors and 68,445 family units illegally entering the U.S., according to Breitbart.
Border Patrol underscored to the overall decrease in apprehensions but noted that the past several months have seen an increase in unaccompanied children and family units due to volatile conditions in Central and South America.
The agency said “DHS is closely monitoring this situation along with its interagency partners” and argued that violence and poor economic conditions in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are serving to push the migration northward.
A report released earlier this week troublingly found that while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintain facilities that detain as many as 34,000 immigrants on a given night, ICE inspections are conducted entirely in-house.
Furthermore, not only does the agency self-regulate by creating its own guidelines, it self-audits conditions at each facility without any external oversight whatsoever.
“Basically they determine what the conditions should be and then they audit their own standards,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told reporters in a conference call Wednesday. “That’s obviously a conflict of interest.”
Smith also noted he was troubled by ICE’s reliance on private, for-profit prison companies for day-to-day operations at immigrant detention centers.