The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency’s (CBP) Miami Sector covers roughly 187,000 square miles, including 1,279 miles of coastline. While most of its jurisdiction is focused in Florida, some also extends north into Georgia, South Carolina, and as far as North Carolina.
On Tuesday, the sector’s chief patrol agent, Walter N. Slosar, shared an infographic on Twitter highlighting the number of migrant encounters and maritime smuggling interceptions from the last two-and-a-half months. From October 1 to Sunday, the sector logged 2,350 migrant encounters and 131 smuggling events, up 500 percent and 330 percent, respectively, from the same time frame last year.
The Miami sector’s statistics come as a sizable migrant caravan crossing into El Paso has reignited right-wing rhetoric over the “invasion of the U.S.-Mexico border. According to local Fox affiliate reporter Bill Melugin, a caravan of over 1,000 undocumented immigrants attempted to cross into El Paso, Texas, on Monday, which he claimed to be the largest single group ever.
Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott invoked the state’s Invasion Clauses with regard to the southern border, giving the state government greater authority to tackle the situation, including the deployment of National Guard forces and a greater empowerment of DPS agents to make arrests. Abbott also recently announced the formation of an “elite taskforce” to pursue migrants who get past Border Patrol agents.
Despite those efforts, Abbott has come under fire from fellow Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under Donald Trump, for not taking greater measures to prevent crossings altogether.
“While this sounds good—Governor Abbott has not invoked the full authority of an invasion declaration,” Cuccinelli said in a statement from November. “Saying you are being invaded but not blocking the invaders from coming is a hollow shell. Until Governor Abbott removes illegals back across the border and out of the country, this will continue to be a PR stunt—and Texas and the U.S. are worse off because of it.”
In Florida, statistics indicate that the state has seen more Cuban migrants in particular attempting to enter the country by water in 2022 than at any point since the 1990s, according to CNN, with around 6,000 cases as of late September.
“We’ve seen this before. It’s a natural phenomenon,” Slosar told CNN. “However, seeing the uptick for us is really concerning and the fact that we’re seeing more individuals on not-so-seaworthy vessels, putting a significant amount of those individuals at very dangerous risk for loss of life.”
Newsweek reached out to the CBP Miami Sector for comment.
