A Republican Congressman is challenging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on its reporting of illegal migrants crossing into the U.S. through the Mexican border. For the past two years, officials have said that illegal crossings into the U.S. are down.

But now the department is accused of not fully reporting the number of people who cross the border successfully.

The U.S. Border Patrol regularly releases its number of how many illegal migrants are apprehended at the border. They also have a way of tracking the people who cross the border illegally and get away. Agents count the number of footprints or signs of people who slipped past them. That number is used internally by the Border Patrol to come up with rough estimates of how many illegal migrants made it in.

But Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Vista) says he has data from within homeland security that shows that in the past year, the agency hasn’t counted everybody who got away.

In a letter sent to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on March 1, Issa says he analyzed a series of Border Patrol shift reports over a one-week period in Casa Grande, Arizona. Those reports showed 82 people who crossed illegally and were never caught, but were also never counted as so-called “got aways.”

DHS officials deny the accusation.

Read the full story at Fronteras