Border Patrol official to Congress: 'We can't arrest our way out of this problem'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A top U.S. Border Patrol official tells Fox News that the immigration situation unfolding in America is "no longer constrained to the border" – forcing other officers to be pulled away from their duties to deal a crisis that is “beyond the breaking point.”
Chief Rodney Scott of the agency’s San Diego sector made the comments on "Fox & Friends" Friday while noting that agents have arrested more than a half a million people at the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year.
“We have had to pull multiple CBP officers away from other duties, which means trade and travel are getting slowed down, it means international flights are going to be slowed down,” he said. “We have pulled in several hundred people across DHS that are literally administrative employees to help feed and care for these people.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}RURAL BORDER CITY OF YUMA IN EMERGENCY HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WITH SURGE OF MIGRANTS
“But we are beyond a breaking point,” Scott added. “And without action from Congress to create a consequence to illegal entry we can’t arrest our way out of this problem.”
Scott also said the number of people that are getting arrested at the border appears to be increasing every day.
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“We’ve actually topped over half a million arrests… that’s only in the first several months of this year,” he told ‘Fox & Friends’. “We haven’t seen those types of numbers since 2009 and those were for the entire year, not for just half the year.”
To fix the situation, Scott says “we need to detain people in custody until they get their hearing” while also sending more judges down to the border and “expedite the immigration review process.”