The Congressional Budget Office has issued its yearly Demographic Outlook study, which summarizes the impact of immigration, both legal and illegal, on US demographcs in the most recent fiscal year and projects trends in future decades. To the surprise of no one who’s been paying attention, the figures last year surged. You can access the study at the CBO website.
In particular, the estimate for that great unknowable of immigration statistics: the number of “got-aways,” illegals for whom there is reason to suspect that they crossed the border and evaded apprehension. By this limited definition — officials must have, for example, seen some evidence of their passage, such as tracks or discarded debris — even an accurate estimate would still not include those who left no trace at all. Since the Biden administration is leery of violating what it believes is the God-given right of everyone in the third world to settle in America, there is little for the average illegal to fear removalwise. So those who do take serious steps to avoid the Border Patrol most often have something to hide, whether it’s their wanted status here or elsewhere, their evil intent, dangerous drugs they’re carrying, or whatever.
That’s why the number of such got-aways is both important and, unfortunately, unknowable. In FY 2023, the CBO estimates that there were at least 860,000 got-aways. That’s compared with 600,000 in fiscal 2022 and 389,515 in fiscal 2021. Figure the actual number to be twice or three times or some other multiple of those numbers. In any event, it is a sure bet that got-aways during the Biden admistration have numbered in the millions, a number to be added to the six or so million who were “encountered,” and then, likely as not, been processed and released.
For more, see The Demographic Outlook: 2024 to 2054.