Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the number of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border is at an "extraordinary height."
"There is no question about that," Mayorkas told Sharyn Alfonsi in an episode of CBS News' "60 Minutes" set to air April 2.
"But that is not unique to the southern border of the United States," he continued. "There is tremendous amount of movement throughout the hemisphere and, in fact, throughout the world."
There were more than 1.7 million migrant encounters at the border in fiscal year 2021, followed by more than 2.3 million in FY 2022. Numbers have dipped in the past two months, but FY 2023 has so far been on track to outpace FY 2022.
Mayorkas told CBS the U.S. faces "a very serious challenge in certain parts of the border" but that he had "tremendous faith in the people of the Department of Homeland Security, and a crisis speaks to me of a withdrawal from our mission."
"And we are only putting more force and more energy into it."
His comments come two days after a group of over 1,000 immigrants crossed into the U.S. and turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
Traffic at the southern border is expected to surge when a pandemic-era measure known as Title 42 ends on May 11. The policy allowed the U.S. to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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