U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and 17 other House Republicans have sent a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayokas asking for a new report showing the number of illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
In April 2021, DHS released a report called “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2015-January 2018.” The report revealed as of January 2018, there were 11.4 million illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
However, DHS has not released updated numbers since then.
According to the congressmen’s letter, since January 2021, Border Patrol has encountered more than 7.6 million illegal aliens at the southwest border. In addition to the more than 1.8 million gotaways, it was also found that DHS has released more than 4.7 million illegal aliens into the U.S. The total number shows that at least 6.5 million illegal aliens have entered the United States since President Joe Biden took office.
The letter continues by saying that, “Despite the administration’s claims to the contrary, it has removed, through immigration court removal proceedings, less than one percent of the millions of illegal aliens released into the interior between January 20, 2021, and September 30, 2023.”
“The American people deserve an exact accounting of the number of illegal aliens residing in the country, especially if the federal government’s policies have caused that number to surge since the previous estimate,” wrote the representatives.
The Congressmen are requesting that the DHS produce an updated report on the number of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. from January 2018 to present day.
Among the list, they are also asking for the numbers of illegal aliens who evaded border patrol capture at the southern, northern, and coastal borders—including an estimate of unknown gotaways—and the number of illegal aliens who have overstayed their visas.
Texas Scorecard previously reported on documents from the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security revealing that the Biden administration has flown thousands of illegal aliens into Texas airports. The report shows that DHS has flown more than 400,000 illegal aliens into 50 different airports around the U.S. since January 2023.
In an investigative report, Selene Rodriguez of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told Texas Scorecard that many illegal aliens being in the country go unreported.
“A big thing that you have to take into account when you’re trying to estimate the ‘undocumented population,’ as you’ll see it said, is they don’t report a lot of things,” said Rodriguez. “They don’t go to the hospital; if they’ve been here for a while they don’t report crime because of fear of deportation. A lot of them being in the country at all just goes wildly unreported, so you’re never going to get close enough to that number.”
Additionally, Rodriguez also said federal reporting of illegal aliens has been messed with to hide how bad the border crisis has become.
“They have changed the reporting metrics for Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Homeland Security, to where you don’t really get an idea,” she said. “The only metrics they report are how many people they’ve encountered, and a lot of times those encounters can be the same person multiple times.”
Five other Texas congressmen signed onto Roy’s letter, including Keith Self, Randy Weber, Brian Babin, Morgan Luttrell, and Michael Cloud.
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