More Than a Million Illegal Immigrants Expected to Cross Border in 2021: Official

Illegal immigrants, most from Honduras, walk toward a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico near Mission, Texas, on March 23, 2021. John Moore/Getty Images

A Border Patrol official estimated that more than 1 million illegal immigrants are expected to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021 as the White House grapples with how to find facilities and process them.

“We’re already starting to see some higher days of 6,000-plus apprehensions,” Raul Ortiz, deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, told reporters. “So I fully expect our border patrol agents to encounter over a million people this year.”