U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tracked over 1 million migrant encounters since Oct. 1st, when fiscal year 2024 began, a CBP source told Fox News Digital on Wednesday, the earliest this mark has ever been reached.
The number is roughly 100,000 encounters higher than the same period last year, when the U.S. saw 908,000 encounters. This is the earliest the U.S. has ever reached the 1 million encounter mark, according to the CBP source.
The U.S. is also tracking a higher number of Chinese migrants crossing the border. Chinese illegal immigrants made up the fastest-growing group of border crossers last year, and fiscal year 2024 is on track to shatter that record.
The CBP encountered over 37,000 Chinese migrants last year, but they have already encountered nearly 20,000 since October. The CBP source says they have encountered roughly 150 Chinese migrants per day this fiscal year.
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The news comes just after a bipartisan immigration bill crashed and burned in Congress this week.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other critics of the bill argued that it would "normalize" 5,000 border encounters each day.
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"That works out to 1.8 million a year. That works out to about 6 million illegal immigrants over the three years of Biden…. So the idiotic Republican proposal was let's be for two thirds of the border invasion that Biden has allowed," Cruz told Fox News on Tuesday.
The House of Representatives also failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a vote on Tuesday.
The House voted mostly along party lines, but Republicans suffered a number of defections that torpedoed the 216-214 vote. Four Republicans ultimately voted no: Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Blake Moore, R-Utah, who switched his vote at the last minute in a procedural move to be able to bring the resolution back to the floor.
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Lawmakers voted on a resolution combining two articles of impeachment that accused Mayorkas of having "refused to comply with Federal immigration laws" and the other of having violated "public trust." A Cabinet secretary has not been impeached since 1876, when Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached.
Border crossings have set several records in recent months. December saw 302,000 migrant encounters alone, the highest total for a single month ever recorded. It was also the first time a monthly total had exceeded 300,000.
Fox News' Adam Shaw and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report
