United States Border Patrol chief Jason Owens told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the migrant crisis at the southern border is a "national security threat."

When asked whether smugglers at the border are "setting the rules of engagement," Owens replied, "Yes, they absolutely are. They dictate what the flow is going to look like, and we respond to it."

Owens added, "We try to get out in front of it and deny them the ability to use these areas, especially ones that we think are going to be dangerous for us and for the migrants. But at the end of the day, there's over 1,900 miles of border with Mexico. Now, when you talk about 20,000 Border Patrol agents, that sounds like a lot. But you multiple that by 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across the entirety of the year, that number starts to dwindle very fast."

He explained that the smugglers intentionally manipulate Border Patrol's response by pushing migrant groups to certain areas of the southern border as a distraction.

"The tactic is they'll push groups across, knowing that we're going to respond from a humanitarian perspective and make sure that they're safe. And while we're tied up and occupied doing this, what are [the smugglers] doing a couple miles down the road?" Owens questioned.

He noted that he is "absolutely" concerned about potential terrorists crossing the southern border while agents are bogged down with processing asylum-seekers.

"You ask any law enforcement officer, especially someone who works in border security, that is what keeps us up at night," Owens told CBS News. "We're closing in on a million entries this fiscal year alone. That number is a large number, but what's keeping me up at night is the 140,000 known gotaways."

Gotaways are illegal migrants who have been detected on cameras or sensors but have intentionally evaded being apprehended by law enforcement agents.

Owens noted that the 1 million recorded entries and the 140,000 recorded gotaways do not include illegal migrants who have crossed into the country undetected.

"That is a national security threat," Owens continued. "If we don't know who is coming into our country and we don't know what their intent is, that is a threat. And they're exploiting a vulnerability that's on our border right now."

A recent Congressional Budget Office report estimated that 860,000 illegal migrants entered the country in fiscal year 2023 "without encountering a [Customs and Border Protection] official."

Owens claimed that individuals from at least 160 countries have entered the United States this fiscal year, which started in October. The majority of the illegal migrants are "by and large good people," he added.

"There are still people that we're finding in those groups, though, that have criminal backgrounds, that have been convicted sexual predators, that have been convicted gang members — a very small amount in that population, but they're still there," he said.

Owens called for harsher penalties for illegally crossing into the country.

"I'm talking about jail time. I'm talking about being removed from the country, and I'm talking about being banned from being able to come back because you chose to come in the illegal way instead of the established lawful pathways that we set for you," he stated.

From October through February, agents at the southern border encountered 1,151,448 migrants, according to CBP data.

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