This excludes those who illegally entered and evaded capture, known as gotaways. CBP doesn’t publicly report gotaway data. The Center Square first reported gotaway data in 2021 after obtaining it from a Border Patrol agent. In fiscal 2023, there were over 101,000 gotaways reported in California’s two sectors and nearly 413,000 apprehensions, The Center Square exclusively reported.

Fiscal 2024 gotaway data is forthcoming, but if trends continue as they have in the past, California’s total reported illegal border crossers, including apprehensions and gotaways, are expected to surpass 625,000 in fiscal 2024. That’s up from nearly 514,000 combined in fiscal 2023.

The data also excludes inadmissibles released into California through roughly a dozen parole programs created under the Biden-Harris administration that federal judges, roughly half of state attorneys general, and Congressional Republicans argue are illegal.

California shares the smallest international border with Mexico of the four southwest border states – 137 miles. It’s nearly evenly split in linear land mileage between the CBP sectors of El Centro and San Diego.

The San Diego Sector is the largest of the two sectors, covering nearly 57,000 square miles, including 931 miles of coastal border stretching to Oregon. It shares 60 linear miles with Mexico by land and 114 coastal miles along the Pacific Ocean. The area with the greatest foot traffic includes roughly 7,000 square miles that encompasses beaches, mesas, an inland mountain range, canyons and high desert.

The greatest number of apprehensions have historically been reported in the San Diego Sector. In fiscal 2024, San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended at least 324,260 illegal border crossers, representing a 40% increase from their fiscal year 2023 apprehensions of 230,941.

San Diego Office of Field Operations reported 183,890 encounters with illegal foreign nationals in fiscal 2024, according to the data.

Now retired San Diego Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke has testified before Congress about the hardships San Diego Sector agents faced resulting from what he described as Biden-Harris administration “open border policies.” He’s described the impact of having to close Border Patrol checkpoints when illegal entries peaked in July 2022 to roughly 16,000 knowing that miles of the border were left wide open and unpatrolled.

He’s also testified how agents were ordered not to report an alarming increase in “special interest aliens” and continue to grapple with unaccompanied minors believed to be drugged, smuggled and trafficked. California agents have also expressed alarm about the volume of fentanyl pouring through the sector as federal, state and local law enforcement officers have seized enough fentanyl in one year to kill billions of people.

In the El Centro Sector, Border Patrol agents apprehended 17,484 illegal border crossers in fiscal 2024. The sector lies in the Imperial Valley of Southern California and spans 71 linear miles along the U.S.-Mexico border. Much of it is remote and dangerous, including desert and mountainous terrain where summer heat regularly exceeds 120 degrees.

El Centro Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino has expressed alarm about unaccompanied children who agents rescue “from being exploited by smugglers. These criminals are not related to the children they smuggle. These traffickers go to extreme lengths to smuggle these children – giving them sleep aids to keep them quiet.”

El Centro Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino also told members of Congress that a surge of more than 50,000 illegal border crossers in fiscal 2023 took agents away from their primary purpose to protect the homeland. “Any time there is a surge of individuals processing care, feeding and care of those individuals takes Border Patrol agents away from their primary job of preventing bad people and bad things from coming across the border,” Bovino said.

As Texas’ border security mission, Operation Lone Star, put pressure on cartel traffickers, illegal border crossers were moved west, with the San Diego Sector becoming the epicenter of the border crisis, The Center Square first reported in February and again in April as the crisis worsened.

California has also reported an increase in Chinese illegal border crossers as federal agents continue to target California-based Chinese-linked money laundering operations linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, The Center Square reported. California sheriffs have expressed their opposition to Vice President Kamala Harris’ border policies, saying, “we do not support her,” The Center Square reported. One sheriff told members of Congress that the policies of the Biden-Harris administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom turned California into “an open territory for the cartel to do whatever it wants.”

Combined, apprehensions in California’s two sectors totaled at least 525,634, excluding gotaways. Data for both sectors is consistent with nationwide data: the overwhelming majority of illegal border crossers are single adults coming from all over the world.

The final New York Times/Siena College poll was released Friday, showing Trump and Harris in a dead tie nationally at 48%. The tie could signal good news for Trump, who was actually trailing Harris by 2 points in the same poll earlier this month.

On top of that, Democrats can and have won the national vote without winning the Electoral College.

“Trump Leads Among Men, White Voters, Midwest and South,” Siena College said in its release. “Harris Leads Among Women, Non-white Voters, Northeast and West.”

In the seven closest swing states, the races all remain basically within the margin of error, although Trump does hold a very narrow lead in all seven states, according to Real Clear Politics’ aggregation of recent polling.

Formerly competitive swing states like Florida and Ohio have gone for Trump by wide margins while Minnesota, New Mexico, and Colorado are in Harris’ camp in the latest polling.

FiveThirtyEight, another poll aggregator and analyzer, found Trump either tied or slightly ahead in the seven closest states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Joe Rogan, who hosts the most popular podcast in America, released a taped interview with Trump. The 3-hour-long interview provided an unusually long conversation with Trump in a time when candidates are often protected by aides from invasive questioning.

Rogan has expressed mixed political opinions in the past. Rogan’s podcast is most popular among men, a demographic Harris is struggling to court.

Harris participated in a CNN Town Hall this week, where she attacked Trump on a range of issues including not joining her on CNN for a second debate.

Trump reportedly wanted a debate on Fox News.

Harris herself though faced pushback from CNN’s Anderson Cooper during the Town Hall and critics afterward for refusing to directly answer questions.

Longtime Democratic strategist and key staffer in the Obama administration David Axelrod critiqued Harris for her “word salad” answers.

“When she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city and she did that on a couple of answers,” Axelrod said on the CNN panel following the town hall. “One of them was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question: would you be stronger on Israel than Trump, and there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question he was asking.”

Harris previously took fire for her lack of media interviews. Now, she is taking fire for her answers. Several media reports have indicated Democrats are worried that Harris has slipped from her momentum weeks ago.

“There is no joy left in the Democrat Party in the final week of the campaign,” Republican strategist Nate Brand told The Center Square. “Desperation has set in for Kamala and the left. At this point in the race, the winning team is normally the one having the most fun. From McDonald’s to Madison Square Garden, clearly Trump is having a good time. Bodes well for Republicans on Election Day.”

At an event in Dallas held on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel held by the nonprofit America for Israel, Cruz said after the attack, the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs tweeted, “Israel must not respond. There must be no military response.” He replied, saying, “This is disgraceful. Whoever wrote it should be fired and it should be deleted.” Within minutes, the post was deleted, he said.

The next day, October 8, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that he’d spoken to the Turkish foreign minister “and we have agreed that Israel must not retaliate and there must be no military response whatsoever,” Cruz said.

Turkey’s president also compared Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolph Hitler and called for “an alliance of humanity” to stop his “murder network.”

Cruz said Blinken’s position was “utterly disgraceful” and his social media post “should be deleted again. They deleted it within minutes,” he said.

Israel must eliminate the Islamic terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, largely funded by Iran, Cruz says, because it’s “unquestionably in the national security interest of Israel and unquestionably in the national security interest of America.”

One year into the conflict with Hamas, Iran launched 200 missiles at Israel. Afterwards, President Joe Biden told reporters that “all seven of us [G7 country leaders] agree that they [Israel] have a right to respond but they should respond proportionally.” France’s president called for a ceasefire and an Israeli weapons embargo.

At the Dallas event, a member of the Israeli Knesset questioned Biden’s remarks and Cruz said those calling for a cease fire with terrorists were “siding with genocidal maniacs.”

Israeli MK Ohad Tal, Knesset Chair US/Israel Relations Caucus, asked what a proportionate response would be to Iran “terrorizing Israel for 30 years, building a network of proxies all around the Middle East in order to attack Israel.”

He cited “Hezbollah launching 150,000 ballistic missiles, Shiite militias in Syria with 40,000 soldiers, same number of militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and so many other forces.” He said Iran “sent Hamas on October 7 to slaughter, to burn families alive. Hezbollah shot at Israel about 1,200 rockets only in the past year. … Are we supposed to go to Iran to rape, to slaughter, to kill, to burn” Iranians, he asked. “Is this what we’re supposed to do? … We are supposed to wait for Iran to arm their missiles with nuclear warheads?”

Everyone in the west and America “should wake up and realize that we are serving the same purpose” against Iran, he said. “We are fighting your war.”

In a social media post, Netanyahu explained that “Israel is defending itself on 7 fronts against the enemies of civilization. We’re fighting in Gaza against Hamas, those savages who murdered, raped, beheaded, and burned our people on October 7. We’re fighting in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the most heavily armed terror organization, which was planning an even greater massacre than October 7 on our northern borders, and that has rocketed Israeli towns and cities for nearly a year.

“We’re fighting against the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria that together have launched hundreds of drones and missile attacks against Israel. We’re fighting against terrorists in Judea and Samaria who are trying to murder civilians in the heart of our cities. And we’re fighting against Iran, which last week fired over 200 ballistic missiles directly at Israel, and which stands behind the seven-front war against Israel.”

Netanyahu said, “all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side.” While some western leaders call for an arms embargo against Israel, he asked if Iran was imposing one on Hezbollah, the Houthis or Hamas.

With or without the west’s support, Netanyahu said, “Israel is defending civilizations against those who seek to impose a dark age of fanaticism on all of us. … Israel will fight until the battle is won, for our sake and for the sake of the peace and security of the entire world.”

On Wednesday, Biden spoke with Netanyahu and “affirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and “condemned unequivocally” Iran’s ballistic missile attack, according to a read out of the call issued by the White House.

Biden also “emphasized the need for a diplomatic arrangement” between Israel and Lebanon, urged Israel “to renew diplomacy” with Hamas “to release the hostages” still being held for over one year, and facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza, the statement says.

When it comes to the leaders of countries and terrorist groups that refer to Israel as “the little Satan” and to America as “the great Satan,” Cruz said, “The enemies of Israel are enemies of America. American policy should very simply be we stand unequivocally with Israel for as long as it takes.”

“If history teaches anything, it is that when somebody tells you they want to kill you, believe them,” he said.

“We are living on borrowed time,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. “I believe that today we’re at a greater risk for a major terrorist attack than we have been at any point since Sept. 11, 2001. The policies of [President] Joe Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris and [U.S. Rep.] Colin Allred have made every Texan and every American much less safe.”

Cruz faces Allred in a tight race for his U.S. Senate seat in November.

“When you combine their disastrous foreign policy, flowing over $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, which in turn flows directly into the pockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, when you combine that incredibly weak foreign policy with Kamala Harris and Colin Allred’s open borders, the result is an invitation for terrorists to murder Americans.”

Of the numerous Biden-Harris border policies Cruz has identified as dangerous and illegal, one involves flying millions of illegal foreign nationals nationwide and even housing them in airports at taxpayer expense. He’s demanded answers on the “incredible lapses in vetting and screening illegal aliens at airports” following reports “that multiple airports have housed illegal aliens and that the Biden-Harris administration has flown in 435,000 unvetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, directly into the United States.”

That number has increased to 530,000 according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, in addition to 813,000 arriving through a CBP One app and an untold number through Biden-Harris parole programs. Cruz, House and Senate Republicans, attorneys general and federal judges argue they are illegal.

“Tragically, it is only a matter of time before another major terrorist attack is likely to occur because of Kamala Harris and Colin Allred’s open border policies,” Cruz said, referring to the Dallas Democrat who is challenging him in his Senate race. Allred has voted against border security measures that other Texas Democrats supported.

When asked to comment about terrorism threats Allred’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

In a recent campaign ad, Allred says, “I’m working with both parties to finally secure the border, to add more border patrol agents, crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking,” also pointing to a failed Senate border bill to solve the border crisis.

Among others, Cruz requested information about the Massachusetts Port Authority and Boston Logan International Airport, the airport used by a number of 9/11 terrorists.

Retired U.S. Federal Aviation Administration special agent Brian Sullivan was instrumental in surfacing Logan Airport’s screening checkpoint vulnerabilities and among the first to warn about a potential terrorist attack.

“The warning lights are blinking now even more so than they were 23 years ago,” he told The Center Square.

Sullivan conducted a sting at the Logan Airport in May 2001 and warned the FAA, former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, and the Massachusetts Port Authority of checkpoint vulnerabilities, the same checkpoints used by the 9/11 terrorists.

“No one listened then and nobody is listening now. That’s what scares me,” he said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration.

Sullivan, a Vietnam veteran, served in the military police retiring as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army and worked as an FAA special agent for ten years. He shares the same concerns as military and intelligence leaders that Americans are in danger because of a “soft invasion” of primarily single military age men illegally entering the U.S. and migrant warfare, first reported by The Center Square.

Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned about an ISIS smuggling ring coming through the border and of increased security risks posed by China and Iran. Congressional Republicans also have demanded answers about terrorist threats.

In June, a former CIA deputy director warned that a terrorist attack could occur before the election.

Since then, hundreds of members of ISIS are confirmed to have illegally entered the U.S., officials say vetting isn’t occurring, Chinese illegal border crossers have breached U.S. military bases, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the U.S.-Canada border, Canadian officials have expressed alarm, and Cruz and others called for greater security due Hamas members entering from Canada, as Jewish Americans, he and others are targeted by pro-Hamas protestors.

In the last few months, three assassination attempts were foiled against former President Donald Trump, including by an Iran-linked Pakistani, Trump has been briefed on an Iranian assassination plot, and President Joe Biden extended a 2001 executive order declaring a national emergency due to terrorism threats.

This was preventable, Cruz argues. Biden, Harris and Allred policies “have made every Texan and every American much less safe.

“Right now, today, Iran has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. Hamas has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. Hezbollah has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. ‘Palestinian Islamic Jihad,’ true to their name, has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans.”

“The only solution,” he says, “is to throw Joe Biden and Kamala Harris out of office, to reelect Donald Trump, to reelect me, and elect a strong Republican Senate and a strong Republican House” who “will secure the border and we will do so in a matter of weeks.

“The open invitation of Kamala Harris and Colin Allred, that’s what’s caused this crisis. We know how to fix it. We’ve done it before,” he said, referring to implementing Trump-era policies that “achieved the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.”

Prior to the last budget funding showdown in March, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said in January that “any bill that does not secure the border is not acceptable.”

He also identified 64 examples of ways he says the Biden-Harris administration “worked to systematically undermine America’s border security.”

In February, House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas arguing he was derelict in his duty and violated the public trust by creating a border crisis. One month later, the majority of Republicans who voted to impeach him, passed a spending bill that funded programs he created they maintain are illegal.

While Americans complain about escalating crime caused by illegal border crossers who’ve inundated their communities, Congress funded the programs that brought them there – and are keeping them there – including DHS’ Shelter and Services Program grants funneling billions to primarily Democratic states, counties, cities as well as nonprofits.

Likewise, the U.S. Senate’s “strongest border security bill in history” the White House, Senate and House Democrats keep touting, co-authored by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-OK, allocated “an additional $1.4 billion in SSP funds, and provide additional needed tools and resources to respond to historic global migration,” DHS says – to fund caring for illegal border crossers released into the US.

DHS recently announced the latest round of SSP funding of $380 million—a drop in the bucket to overall spending authorized by Congress. This round “augments the $259.13 million in SSP grants that DHS distributed in April 2024 … which was authorized by Congress to support communities that are providing services to migrants,” DHS says.

The April DHS grant money was distributed after Congress in March passed a $1.2 trillion spending package to avoid a so-called government shutdown, despite Johnson’s and others’ claims, about requiring border security as a condition for passing it.

More than $780 million worth of SSP and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program – Humanitarian Awards grants were awarded in fiscal 2023 “which went to organizations and cities across the country,” DHS says. That’s after DHS awarded $640.9 million in fiscal 2024 “to enable non-federal entities to off-set allowable costs incurred for services associated with noncitizen migrant arrivals in their communities,” also authorized by Congress.

Here are examples of fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 grant recipients and the amounts they received.

The SSP grants are awarded in phases. One round in fiscal 2024, totaling $40.8 million, was awarded to:

• City/County of Denver, $5.9 million;
• District of Columbia, $2.7 million;
• City of Chicago, $3.8 million;
• Commonwealth of Massachusetts, nearly $4.9 million;
• NYC Office of Management and Budget, $20.4 million;
• City of Philadelphia over $3 million.
• That’s after $275 million was awarded to 55 recipients in the attached spreadsheet. Top recipients in one round of funding include:
• New York City’s Office of Management and Budget, $38.8 million;
• Pima County, Ariz., $21.8 million;
• Catholic Charities, Diocese of San Diego of $19.5 million;
• Maricopa County, $11.6 million, among others.

Democratic-led cities also received large payouts in one round of funding:

• Atlanta, $10.8 million;
• Chicago, $9.6 million;
• Denver, $5.8 million.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts also cashed in, receiving nearly $7 million; the District of Columbia received $8.7 million; Illinois, $9.6 million, all in one round of funding.

Democratic controlled El Paso County has long received federal money to coordinate transporting illegal foreign nationals north to New York City, Chicago and Denver, The Center Square reported; Austin and San Antonio followed suit flying north “guests coming from the border,” to “proactively manage the flow of people” out of their cities.

These grants exclude others awarded through numerous other federal agencies, including FEMA, U.S. Health and Human Services and others.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, and several House Freedom Caucus members argue Congress has a constitutional requirement to stop funding the border crisis. DeSantis, a Freedom Caucus member when he served in Congress, has asked, “How many congressmen rail against Biden’s transgressions yet still vote to fund them?”

Massie said in January that “in March, when funding expires, we can put a rider in the next bill that says none of the money hereby appropriated can be used to countermand border security measures of the states.”

This didn’t happen. The majority of Republicans voted to keep spending taxpayer money on these programs. By July, a U.S. House Judiciary Committee report highlighted examples of how Congress was still funding the border crisis.

In a social media post, he published a video of an interview between a Texas DPS trooper and a Turkish national, who was with a group of other Turkish men who illegally entered the country and were identified as SIAs.

Each of the SIAs had Turkish passports and were military age men.

The video depicts a female Texas Department of Public Safety trooper interviewing a Turkish national who spoke English. She asked him, “how did you guys make it over here?”

He said, “they found a network in Istanbul and some people took us first to Kuwait.”

When she asked them how they found the network, he replied, “Through Telegram, Instagram,” referring to a chat network and social media site.

He said they paid “$12 grand a person,” and the men with him confirmed they also paid that amount. He also said he didn’t know other people who were apprehended at the same time and standing nearby.

When she asked him what they were doing there in a remote area at the border, he said they were “looking for police to take us.”

“But do you have family, friends, anybody?” the trooper asked. “We have sponsors.”

When asked how they found the sponsors, he said through the network in Istanbul. When asked what a sponsor means, he said, “that means that they are going to take care of our expenses and everything.”

Olivarez said they weren’t the only SIAs that DPS troopers apprehended.

In the last 48 hours, DPS troopers have come across eight SIAs from five countries, all apprehended in a rural area of Normandy, Texas, in Maverick County, he said.

Texas DPS “uses every tool and resource,” working with local, county, and federal law enforcement partners to screen SIAs properly, he said, and “to provide transparency to the American public” about who’s illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

SIAs are noncitizens who based “on an analysis of travel patterns” are “known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism” who “potentially poses a national security risk to the United States,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security explains.

Having an SIA designation does not necessarily mean the individual is a terrorist but their travel pattern “indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation.”

In 2016 during the Obama administration, DHS Secretary Jae Johnson ordered DHS to create a “‘multi-DHS Component SIA Joint Action Group’ to drive efforts to ‘counter the threats posed by the smuggling of SIAs.’” In 2019, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security released a report outlining the threat posed by SIAs and “unknown and other potentially dangerous individuals, traveling to the United States using illicit pathways.”

Earlier this week, retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke testified before Congress about how he said the Biden administration instructed him to not publicize arrests of SIAs.

“We had an exponential increase in Significant Interest Aliens … with significant ties to terrorism” illegally entering in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Sector, Heitke said.

Prior to the Biden-Harris administration, the sector averaged 10 to 15 SIAs per year. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year,” Heitke said.

“These are only the ones we caught,” meaning the number likely is higher because of the volume of gotaways, those who illegally cross the border and are not apprehended.

“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIA’s or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

His testimony came as the greatest number of individuals on the U.S. federal terrorist watch list have been apprehended under the Biden-Harris administration of 1,856 since fiscal 2021 through August, The Center Square reported.