Illegal border crossings at “unsustainable levels”

A U.S. Border Patrol official said his agency has apprehended more than 30,000 illegal immigrants on the southern border in the past 10 days.

“This is a challenge unlike any we’ve ever faced before,” Chief of Law Enforcement Operations Brian Hastings said Monday on “Fox & Friends.

“We’re up to 474,000 arrests so far this fiscal year, and just the last 10 days alone, 33,000 arrests for us,” he added. “So, our facilities were not designed to handle this type of flow or more importantly, this demographic — about 63 percent being family units and UACs, or unaccompanied alien children.”

The account for the US Border Patrol Chief, Carla Provost, tweeted on Saturday that the agency is overwhelmed and the “system is beyond capacity”.

#BorderPatrol agents are arresting more & more family units every day. These numbers are unsustainable & the system is beyond capacity. Despite measures to increase capacity with additional temp facilities, #USBP has had to release overflow into the communities as a last resort. pic.twitter.com/vnUY21pw2M

— USBPChief (@USBPChief) May 4, 2019

“As I’ve said before, we’re being overwhelmed right now,” Hastings said.

He also criticized current immigration law and said there must be a consequence for entering the U.S. illegally.

“Our facilities just simply weren’t designed to handle this type of flow or this demographic,” Hastings continued. “And so with that, we have had to look at for the safety of our agents and for those that we detained, releasing process non-criminal family units, which we don’t want to do. We want to apply a consequence, but with the outdated laws we simply cannot apply a consequence with what we have right now.”