EXCLUSIVE — The congressman who represents an Arizona border district where thousands of immigrants are illegally entering the United States each day said the Department of Homeland Security's response of shutting down the international port of entry has made the situation worse.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) lambasted DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, arguing the Biden administration's decision has made a bad situation even worse by pausing operations at the Lukeville Port of Entry on Monday. Customs officers from the port were pulled from their jobs to process illegal immigrants, who are being released onto the street by the hundreds daily, all while American and Mexican residents have been blocked from legally crossing the border for school, work, or medical reasons.

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"It was a lose-lose," Ciscomani told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview Thursday. "People that have homes on both sides — they need to cross for medical reasons or they need to cross for school, cross for shopping or trade and commerce and tourism. ... There is zero upside to closing that Lukeville port. Trade has stopped. Tourism has stopped. Businesses on the U.S. side are seeing a 50 to 70% decrease in their sales."

Illegal crossings have continued following the port closure, with arrests rising to a record 17,000 last week. Border Patrol agents in the southeastern region of Arizona, known as its Tucson Sector, have apprehended between 2,000 and 3,000 immigrants daily in the past several weeks, and they had more than 3,800 people in custody Wednesday, according to government data viewed by the Washington Examiner.

DHS agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced last weekend that it would temporarily close the Lukeville Port of Entry to free up its Office of Field Operations officers to help Border Patrol agents between the ports.

The fallout for residents has been significant and comes at the worst possible time of the year as holiday travelers go back and forth over the border, Ciscomani said. Traffic has been diverted from Lukeville to the next closest port of entry, more than a three-hour drive to Nogales, where lines have grown due to the diversion of traffic. Cismoani said residents have reported waiting up to five hours once they got there.

The situation in southeastern Arizona has reached a critical point. The sustained surge of mostly adult men coming across the border into the region is significant because the recent monthly totals are reaching levels not seen since at least 2006. Some immigrants have been lined up and gathered on the northern side of the Trump-era border wall for days waiting to be taken into custody, according to one local reporter. Immigrants have started fires to stay warm as temperatures dip at night.

"You have large numbers of single male adults that are waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol, standing there next to the wall, waiting to be processed," Ciscomani said.

The Tucson Republican said he is constantly in contact with local and state officials who are involved in responding to the situation.

But the problem is expected to grow worse as immigrants who are released onto the street are expected to lose transportation to the nearest major city. Buses funded by Pima County have helped ease the burden on small border towns by transporting them to Tucson daily.

However, that funding has reached a snag and is expected to discontinue any day, Ciscomani said.

It means hundreds of immigrants on the streets of border communities. Border Patrol in the Tucson region released 428 people onto the streets Wednesday.

"You can put all resources you want towards housing and transportation and processing, but that's not a solution that's not going to solve the problem," Ciscomani said. "This isn't beneficial for the migrants themselves either. So I always want to keep a perspective that this isn't humane either when they get transported all the way to New York and they get dropped off and say, 'Well, you're on your own.' It's irresponsible and inhumane, actually, to continue to allow all these people in, where there is no room and resources to be able to provide for them."

While immigrants may be stuck in border towns unable to get rides north on I-19, drug smugglers will have the opposite problem.

Officers at the Nogales port of entry seized more fentanyl from vehicles than any of the 328 land, air, and sea ports nationwide last year. The additional traffic from Lukeville will only add to the pressure to process travel and trade faster, potentially allowing concealed drugs to slip through the port.

Normally, Border Patrol's highway checkpoint north of Nogales on I-19 serves as a second stop to inspect vehicles for drugs, but the checkpoint was shut down more than a week ago as agents were redirected to help process and transport immigrants.

"That checkpoint being closed, again, is dangerous," Ciscomani said. "That’s sending the message back to the really bad actors in the cartels saying whatever they're trying to do is working because now there are less officers to stop them and there are less obstacles to stop them as well. And as soon as they get across the border, people can be home free in the United States."

Ciscomani and Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) met with the DHS chief of staff Thursday afternoon for a discussion about the Lukeville port closure.

"What was the reasoning behind the Lukeville port closure?" Ciscomani said. "I want to understand how they got to that conclusion with that decision because again, it's not about the men and women that are in the front line doing the job that they can do. This is not their doing.

"I'm taking this very serious," Ciscomani said. "This is what I hear about on a daily basis from text messages to phone calls, not only in the office, to my personal phone as well. So this definitely has my full, undivided attention."

A CBP spokesman described the situation as part of continuing "ebbs and flows of migrants arriving."

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"CBP is leveraging all available resources and partnerships to efficiently vet and process migrants consistent with law," the CBP official said in a statement. "The agency continues to surge personnel, transportation, processing, and humanitarian resources to the most active and arduous areas throughout Tucson’s border region where migrants are callously placed by for-profit smuggling organizations, often without proper preparation."

The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.