Over the last week, President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a total of about 12,500 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the United States, federal data confirms.

According to catch and release totals obtained by Breitbart News, DHS has released about 12,500 border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. over a nine-day period between April 9 and April 17. At this rate, DHS is releasing more than 1,300 border crossers and illegal aliens every day into the country.

The catch and 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 border crossers and illegal aliens are never deported from the country once they are released into the U.S.

In the last week, alone, nearly 6,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have been released into the El Paso, Texas, area, and about 3,500 have been released into the San Antonio, Texas, region.

The catch and release policy carried out by DHS, in recent months, has inundated and overwhelmed border regions of the country so much that in Yuma, Arizona, this week, Mayor Douglas Nicholls declared an emergency, citing a lack of public resources to deal with the release of thousands of migrants into the community.

Since December 21, 2018, a total of 146,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have been released into the interior of the U.S. At current illegal immigration levels, the country is on pace to admit between one to 1.5 million. Should the Trump administration continue to mass-release border crossers and illegal aliens into the country, there could potentially be nearly 490,000 released by the end of the year.

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