(NewsNation Now) — U.S. border officials are preparing for as many as 9,000 border arrests per day by the spring, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials.

The number is expected to be significantly larger than last year’s peak. The Biden administration recorded a record-breaking 1.7 million border arrests last fiscal year. Linda Bryant of Del Rio, Texas has seen it firsthand.

It’s common for her to stand on the riverbank and see people illegally migrating from Mexico.

“Probably every three days,” she says.

This past week, Bryant had 25 migrants cross the Rio Grande and pass through her backyard. She says it all happened so quickly. She snapped a photo of muddy footprints as proof.

“They come across and then they came to the shore and they climbed up and the look on their face is absolutely amazing because the look on their face is that, ‘I made it,'” Bryant said.

Border Patrol tallied 1,812 encounters over the weekend in the Del Rio Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In El Paso, Texas border patrol agents raided two stash houses and took custody of 39 migrants being kept there by smugglers. In the Rio Grande Valley, five human smuggling attempts were foiled in an 11-hour span. One of the smugglers’ vans burst into flames after driving through a fence.

Bryant says despite the close encounters she has never once felt unsafe. She says she sympathizes with the plight of the migrants she meets, but she wants the crossings and the smuggling to stop.

“This is a border and it needs to be respected. And we need to protect it. And the people who are protecting it are doing it with their whole life,” Bryant said.