In the month of March alone, agents with the Tucson Sector Border Patrol nabbed well over a dozen previously deported illegal immigrants with serious sex crime convictions who were attempting to sneak into the U.S. with large groups of migrants seeking asylum.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports agents arrested a total of 16 sexual predators at the border last month, with most involving convictions for sex crimes against children in California and Arizona.

All 16 had been previously deported and attempted to re-enter the country within large groups of migrants currently overwhelming government processing centers in Arizona and elsewhere. The arrests account only for those by agents in the Tucson Sector last month, though similar situations are playing out in Texas, New Mexico and California.

“The subjects, all Mexican or Honduran nationals, were encountered within groups of migrants attempting to enter the country illegally,” CBP reports. “Processing agents discovered the records of the subjects during biometric criminal database searches conducted on all persons arrested by CBP. The individuals had all been deported after their convictions.”

The situation prompts obvious concerns about the numbers of previously deported criminal who aren’t apprehended by CBP, especially in light of record numbers of migrants flooding into the U.S. every day.

President Trump declared the border crisis as a national emergency last month after more than 66,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the country’s southwest border with Mexico in February alone.

The situation is overwhelming border agents, and despite fresh resources from the White House, CBP officials are closing checkpoints and diverting manpower to processing centers in a vain attempt to keep pace with the influx.

But the problem is growing worse by the day.

“This is the worst crisis the Border Patrol has ever faced in the history of the Border Patrol and we’re going back to 1924,” National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told WMAL. “In my 21-year career as a Border Patrol agent, I’ve never seen it like this and I’ve worked in the busiest locations. …

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“This is the worst it’s ever been and if we don’t do something it’s going to continue to get worse,” he said.

The most recent estimate from federal officials suggests the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country will likely eclipse 1 million in fiscal year 2019, making it increasingly difficult for CBP to keep out the bad hombres.

“Last month, more than a dozen illegal aliens, who had committed heinous crimes in at least eight U.S. states were arrested by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents as they tried to sneak into the country,” sector chief Roy Villareal said in a CBP news release. “Were it not for the efforts of our agents, these criminal aliens could have victimized additional U.S. citizens.”

Border Patrol officials slammed Democrats on Fox News this week for ignoring the immigration crisis, and suggested the president’s call to cut aid to Central American countries, build a wall, and potentially closing the border completely are all better options than inaction.

“We are definitely at a crisis and it’s an emergency,” border patrol council vice president Art del Cueto told the news site. “In the end, something needs to be done about the overflow of these individuals that are coming into the country.”

“If there’s other countries that are facilitating this invasion, they need to step up to the plate and start doing something about it,” he said.

Unlike Trump, Democrats “haven’t even bothered to come and speak to the agents and the boots on the ground and ask what we need, what is it that they need out there,” del Cueto said. “We are seriously overrun.”