Elon Musk to visit southern border in Texas as migrant numbers hit new records

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Cartels taking advantage of open border to smuggle fentanyl

FOX News correspondent Griff Jenkins reports from the Texas-Mexico border on the unprecedented migrant surge overflowing shelter capacities.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said on Tuesday he will visit the southern border in Eagle Pass, Texas, in the coming days as the ongoing migrant crisis is escalating and seeing new record numbers.

Musk, who owns Tesla, SpaceX and X, has shown significant interest in the ongoing crisis and has been posting about it frequently on X -- formerly known as Twitter.

In a post early Tuesday morning, he said that he had spoken to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about the crisis and how it was a "serious issue."

ELON MUSK ACCUSES MEDIA OF IGNORING BORDER CRISIS BECAUSE THEY WERE ‘INSTRUCTED NOT TO COVER IT’

"They are being overwhelmed by unprecedented numbers – just hit an all-time high and still growing!" he said.

"Am going to visit Eagle Pass later this week to see what’s going on for myself."

Elon Musk, billionaire and chief executive officer of Tesla, at the Viva Tech fair in Paris on Friday, June 16, 2023. (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It comes as migrant numbers have surged after a brief lull in the early summer. Numbers rocketed in July and August, with the more than 230,000 encounters at the border, marking the highest August on record.

Those numbers look set to be even higher in September, with scenes this month of thousands of mostly single adult Venezuelan male migrants flooding into Eagle Pass. The crisis caused border authorities to shut down bridges and surge resources to the area in an effort to cope.

Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, move into Eagle Pass, Texas, Sept. 20, 2023. (Fox News)

Customs and Border Protection sources told Fox News on Monday that there were approximately 11,000 migrant encounters at the southern border, exceeding the record highs seen in the days before the Title 42 public health order ended in May and making it the single highest day in recent memory.

In Eagles Pass alone, there were more than 4,000 encounters over the weekend.

Musk has been sounding the alarm over the crisis, and recently scolded "media NPCs" who are "instructed not to cover it."

MIGRANT NUMBERS SURGED IN AUGUST AS SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS RAGES, SETTING NEW RECORD 

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In response to a report on how New York City is being overwhelmed by migrants who have surged into the sanctuary city, Musk described it as a "severe crisis." He has also taken aim at the Biden administration over its handling of the crisis.

"Strange that there is almost no legacy media coverage of this. About 2 million people – from every country on Earth – are entering through the US southern border every year," he said on X last week. "The number is rising rapidly, yet no preventive action is taken by the current administration."

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His criticism ties into those being made by Republicans, who have put the blame for the crisis on the Biden administration -- specifically for rolling back Trump-era policies, reducing interior enforcement and increasing releases of migrants into the U.S.

The Biden administration has said it is dealing with a Hemisphere-wide challenge, and that its strategy of increasing "consequences" for illegal entry while expanding what it says are "lawful migration pathways" are working -- but that it needs more funding and comprehensive immigration reform from Congress to fix a "broken" system.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.