President Trump’s administration is arresting fewer illegal aliens living in the interior of the United States as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is strained dealing with booming levels of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

ICE officials revealed to Reuters that the agency is having to arrest fewer illegal aliens living throughout the U.S. in order to aid Border Patrol at the southern border because of record illegal immigration levels.

Between October and December 2018, ICE agents arrested about 34,546 illegal aliens living in the country, a 12 percent drop from the year before when nearly 40,000 illegal aliens were arrested by ICE over this same time period.

“Our interior arrests have been affected…” ICE official Nathalie Asher told Reuters.

Asher said the “alarming rates” of illegal immigration at the southern border — where illegal immigration levels this year are expected to outpace every year under former President Obama — have strained ICE agents and forced the agency to redirect help to the border, leaving less deportation officers in the country to handle the illegal population of 11 million to 22 million illegal aliens.

Beltway Class Praises DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen While She Oversees Illegal Immigration Surgehttps://t.co/BM07LQS1U6 — John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) March 6, 2019

A recent letter from union officials who represent ICE agents charged that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has “grossly mismanaged” the agency by making ICE agents responsible for carrying out the administration’s Catch and Release policy.

The ICE union explained an internal process of Catch and Release wherein ICE agents are technically tasked with releasing all border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the country, a policy that union officials write is “extensive, and costly.”

This weekend, alone, DHS is expected to release at least 1,800 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the country, as Breitbart News reported.

In an expansive report recently, Breitbart News confirmed that between December 21, 2018 and March 5, DHS released a total of 84,500 border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. This release process often entails federal immigration officials busing border crossers into nearby border cities and dropping them off with the promise that they will show up for their immigration and asylum hearings, sometimes years later.

The overwhelming majority of illegal aliens released into the interior of the U.S. are never deported.

The record illegal immigration levels come as the Trump administration most recently expanded the Catch and Release policy by signing a spending bill that cut ICE detention space and increased a program that releases border crossers more quickly.

Current illegal immigration projections predict that aside from the border crossers and illegal aliens who are caught by Border Patrol, then released into the interior of the country, there could be about half a million illegal aliens who successfully cross into the U.S. through the southern border, undetected, this year.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.