Border Patrol Is 20 Percent Smaller Than White House Claims, Admin Official Testifies

White House regularly boasts 23,000 Border Patrol Agents. Border Patrol chief states that there are only 19,000.

The U.S. Border Patrol head stated that his agency’s size is about 20 percent less than the White House claims.

Raul Ortiz, chief of Border Patrol, stated that he manages approximately 19,000 Border Patrol officers during testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in McAllen. This number is in direct contradiction to White House statements that the White House regularly boasts about the “more than 23,000” Agents of Border Patrol deployed to secure the southern frontier. 

Ortiz told Congress Wednesday that he needed to be able to speak in Congress. “more officers on the front lines,” He stated that he would need at least 22,000 agents in order to protect the border from an out-of-control crisis. “Right now, I have 19,016. My requirement is 22,000 Border Patrol agents,” Ortiz said. “Until I can get there, I’m going to require assistance from other agencies. But right now, for me, my priority is doing everything I can to add more personnel to my ranks, so we can make sure that Border Patrol agents are out there doing that job.”

The White House and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to our request for comment. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, stated that there are “23,000 federal agents” At the border, crediting large forces for securing border and falsely claiming that it has stopped the flow of Fentanyl into America. White House March 9 “fact sheet” According to the White House “deployed the most agents ever—more than 23,000—to address the situation at the border.” Jean-Pierre declared Biden in December “secured historic funding” To place “23,000 border security agents at the border … the most that we’ve ever had.” 

Chris Cabrera, the Border Patrol union spokesperson, testified in support of Ortiz’s staff assessment. Current Border Patrol staff levels “hover around 19,300 agents,” Cabrera stated that 16,000 were directly responsible for border security. The border hearing was not attended by Democrats. “politicize” The panel.

A top official at the Department of Homeland Security told the Washington Free Beacon Ortiz’s figure is more reliable than the White House’s.

“Congressional testimony goes through rigorous review because you can’t lie to Congress, but the White House can lie to the American people,” The official stated. “If Ortiz testified with that number, he’d have gotten those numbers from his staff so it’s likely correct.”

John Modlin (a local Arizona sector chief of U.S. Border Patrol) testified in February that U.S. Border Patrol would require at least 22,000 agents to deal with the flood of migrants crossing the southern border. The current force size is shrinking and there are no signs that the force will increase to this extent.

Cabrera, the Union spokesperson, stated that Border Patrol is suffering from high attrition rates. They are expected to reach over 9 percent in 2028.

Agency’s ineffectiveness has been severely affected by a lack of staffing. More than 385,000 gotaways—illegal immigrants who were seen by authorities but not detained or deported—have been recorded by Border Patrol this fiscal year alone. CBP had 128,000 and 150,000 gotaways in 2018, respectively. Biden is believed to have seen over 1.3 million getaways since he took office.

Ortiz stated that his agency does not have any “operational control” Alejandro Mayorkas (DHS secretary) disagrees with the statement about the southern border. Ortiz said “the cartels control an awful lot of the southern border south of the United States.”

“And I still hold true that we have some policies in place where we need to ensure that the men and women out there investigating these criminal cartels are actually allowed to do their job each and every day,” Ortiz said later.