Silver State Times

Republicans pounced on the perceived lack of leadership from Democrats on illegal immigration, as the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced that a record number of arrests have been made at the southern border.

This week, the Biden administration released data that over the past 11 months, U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigration arrests along the southern border, according to The Washington Post. This was the first time that number of arrests has ever been documented. 

“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a news release.

Magnus added that for the third consecutive month, migrants trying to enter America from Mexico and Central America had decreased, but “more individuals encountered at the border without a legal basis to remain will be expelled or removed this year than any prior year.”

In early August, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) proposed an amendment to the Inflation Reduction Act which would require the hiring of 18,000 additional Border Patrol agents before any new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents are hired.

According to a National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) press release, last month Senate Democrats voted unanimously against Scott’s measure to prioritize hiring border patrol agents over hiring IRS audit agents.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was among Senate Democrats who voted against Scott's proposal.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, voted in favor of by every Senate Democrat and negotiated by Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the IRS would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional staffers to increase tax audits and monitoring on Americans, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

This increase would more than double the agency's current employee numbers and will allow the IRS to "employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI and Border Patrol combined."

"Democrats would rather audit Americans than secure the border. When they passed their reckless spending bill, they voted against hiring more border patrol agents. Instead, they spent $46 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents," Senate Republicans said on Twitter.

Federal data shows the IRS currently has 78,661 full-time employees. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, this workforce number would rise to 165,661 total IRS agents. For comparison, Border Protection says it currently employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents; the FBI employs around 35,000 people; the State Department employs just over 77,243 people; and the Pentagon employs roughly 27,000 people.

The latest figures show U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants attempting to cross over from Mexico in August alone. This puts authorities on pace to reach more than 2.3 million arrests during the government’s 2022 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, immigration authorities have been reporting the highest-ever daily number of migrants entering the United States along the southwest border. Data from the internal Department of Homeland Security shows Border Patrol officers are logging roughly 8,000 migrant encounters per day as of Sept. 15.