An NBC News reporter expressed astonishment at the sheer volume of migrants who are crossing the US-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Guad Venegas appeared on MSNBC for a live report from the southern border on Thursday.
During the segment, he told MSNBC anchor Jose Diaz-Balart that he had never seen as many people at the border crossing as he did on that day.
“These crowds here in Eagle Pass have never been this large during my reporting,” Venegas told Diaz-Balart. His comments were reported by Mediaite.
“This is the most people I’ve ever seen in Eagle Pass, and other reporters, colleagues working other parts of the border in Arizona, [and] in Jacumba near San Diego tell me the same thing.”
Venegas said that he and other journalists covering the migrant crisis “have these conversations” and “the conversation is always, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this number of migrants arriving.’”
The NBC reporter said that hospitals in the area are “overwhelmed” due to the number of migrants.
“If someone calls 911 and needs to go to the hospital, that hospital might be overwhelmed because they’re helping a lot of these migrants, so you have that humanitarian crisis happening as well,” Venegas said.
A record 12,500 migrants were apprehended at the southern border earlier this week — a one-day record.
In the 12-month period that ended on Oct. 1, a record 2.5 million migrants crossed into the US — up from 2.4 million in the previous 12-month period that ended Oct. 1, 2022.
President Biden has ordered top cabinet officials to travel to Mexico in the coming days for talks with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his aides about stemming the flow of migrants entering the US.
Republicans in Congress have demanded that the Biden administration agree to tougher immigration policies in exchange for funding for Ukraine and Israel.
