Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz testified Wednesday that illegal border crossings, which topped 2 million for the first time last year, have created a 'crisis' that is straining the agency's resources in some areas.
Ana Maria Alvarado and her 9-year-old son Kevin Alexander Avila, from El Salvador, wait with a group who may qualify for a humanitarian exception to enter the U.S., at at the border crossing between Reynosa, Mexico and Hidalgo, Texas, May 1, 2022. At that time, the United States had just started to allow people to apply for asylum under a new process that the secretary of homeland security hoped could help fix the current 'very broken' system.
At one point, Ortiz appeared to contradict Mayorkas, testifying that the department does not have operational control of some parts of the border. The White House accused Republicans of seeking to slash funding for border security as they push spending cuts and said the hearing was nothing more than an effort to gin up political fodder against President Joe Biden, even as his plan to handle asylum-seekers led to a 40 percent drop in illegal border crossings in January. The administration Wednesday reported those figures held in February, with 212,266 arrests, compared to 208,511 the month before.
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