Ted Cruz Slams Biden as Migrant Deaths Surge: 'Body Bags Keep Piling Up'

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, is taking aim at President Joe Biden over the U.S.-Mexico border once again.

Fox News reported on Saturday that a record breaking 856 migrants died at the border during Fiscal Year 2022, which makes it the deadliest year at the border to date. Cruz then took to Twitter and tweeted: "The Biden body bags keep piling up."

Another unfavorable statistic for the Biden administration shows that encounters at the border topped 2.76 million. This number is up nearly 1 million people from the previous annual record, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Danilo Zak, vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Immigration Forum, told Newsweek that although encounters are up, the total number of apprehensions are down. "We are doing better at apprehension, although the number of encounters still poses a massive problem at the border and for local communities," he said.

The latest numbers also reveal that 20 known or suspected terrorists were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border last month, according to the CBP. This brings the total number of people apprehended on the "terror screening watchlist" to 98.

Former FBI agent and counterterrorism expert James Conway told Newsweek, "The border crisis is impacting national security and overwhelming all our systems. The courts, education, law and health are all being impacted. From a counterterrorism perspective the word is out around the world that the backdoor is wide open for all the major terrorist organizations to come in."

On Friday, Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced backlash for not releasing the latest CBP numbers. Former DHS Acting Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and former Acting Commissioner of the CBP Mark Morgan threatened to release the numbers themselves if the Biden administration did not.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Cuccinelli said, "Hiding these border numbers just adds to the ways Mayorkas and Magnus are failing to do their job and are turning their backs on the men and women of CBP and Americans to run interference for drug runners and human traffickers."

The southern border is also top of mind for voters in the South. In the most recent Quinnipiac University poll, when asked what the most urgent issues Texans face are, 38 percent said the Texas-Mexico border. This comes as midterms enter the final stretch.

Mayorkas Faces Backlash Over Agents 'Whipping' Migrants

Meanwhile, Mayorkas is facing additional backlash from the GOP after a recent report shows he knew Border Patrol agents were not "whipping" migrants hours before a White House press conference, in which they were accused of doing so. At the press briefing last September, Mayorkas called the photos "horrifying" and said that an investigation had been opened into the situation.

However, Mayorkas was reportedly sent an email by a DHS public affairs official prior to the conference. The email flagged an article in which the photographer who took the photos said that he and his colleagues didn't witness Border Patrol agents using whips on any of the migrants. The photographer, Paul Ratje, told local news station KTSM that what was happening in his photos could be misconstrued.

Critics said Mayorkas did not challenge the narrative. GOP Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona accused him of defaming his employees "in order to score political points" and lying to Americans.

"His career should be over," Biggs tweeted.

Meanwhile, multiple Republican politicians have asked for Mayorkas to be impeached including Cruz and Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican.

"Mayorkas knowingly sold out the honorable men a women of Border Patrol...all to curry favor with the Biden White House," Cruz tweeted. "I'm [sic] just a few months, Mayorkas will—rightly—be impeached."