The growing number of immigrant arrivals along the U. S. southern borderThe U. S. over the past year and some have fueled serious humanitarian challenges, exhausted government resources, and created political accountability for President Biden.
In some ways, Biden’s immigration flows across the U. S. -Mexico border are unprecedented. Arrests of Americans who have illegally crossed the southern border of the United States have reached unprecedented levels. Immigrant arrivals from some countries, in addition to Cuba and Venezuela, set new records.
But by other measures, adding global illegal entries, the new wave of migration is unprecedented.
Despite recent record levels of immigrant arrests, there were more illegal entries in the mid to early 2000s, when the United States had fewer resources and fewer workers to stop border crossers, according to government information received through CBS News. An unusually high rate of repeated crossings, the coronavirus pandemic has also inflated the number of border arrests.
Here are the data on immigrant arrivals along the U. S. -Mexico border during the Biden administration.
The Border Patrol, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, detains migrants who enter the United States illegally between ports of entry. The Office of Field Operations, some other CBP agency, facilitates the commercial, pedestrian and other bureaucracy of legal traffic, while asylum of immigrants at ports of entry, which is legal under U. S. law.
In fiscal year 2021, which included Biden’s first 8 full months, the Border Patrol recorded 1. 66 million arrests along the southern border, surpassing the previous record of 1. 64 million arrests set in 2000, according to CBP data.
In the first 10 months of fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol agents along the border with Mexico reported more than 1. 8 million arrests, a new record that will most likely surpass 2 million when fiscal year 2023 begins in October, according to CBP figures.
These figures don’t come with migrants processed at access ports along the southern border, where Biden’s management has processed certain teams of migrants, adding Ukrainian refugees, those who returned to Mexico under abandoned Trump-era rules and asylum seekers deemed vulnerable.
In fiscal year 2021, 75,000 migrants were processed through the Office of Field Operations at access ports along the border with Mexico. This number increased to 130,000 in the first 10 months of fiscal 2022.
Before the early 2010s, the vast majority of cross-border workers detained in the United States came from Mexico, childless men traveling in search of work.
This trend was replaced in the following years as immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador began to travel north in greater numbers. The number of families traveling with unaccompanied minors and youth seeking asylum has also increased dramatically, peaking in 2019, under former President Donald Trump.
The pandemic has reversed this trend. Single adult immigrants have returned to the majority of people detained in the United States, accounting for 64 percent of Border Patrol arrests in fiscal year 2021 and 71 percent of arrests in fiscal year 2022, up from 35 percent in 2019, according to CBP. Figures.
Another seismic demographic shift recorded by Biden is the growing percentage of migrants from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador entering the U. S. border guard. USA A record number of Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Haitians and other nationalities have been treated through the U. S. border government for more than a year and a half.
While border patrol arrests involving migrants from countries other than Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle amounted to 9% in fiscal year 2019, they rose to 22% in 2021 and 40% in 2022.
Since March 2020, U. S. border officials have been in the U. S. U. S. citizens have used a public suitability law known as Title 42 to temporarily deport thousands of migrants to northern Mexico or their home country without allowing them to apply for asylum.
In fiscal year 2021, 63 percent, or just over a million, of Border Patrol arrests resulted in the deportation of Title 42 Migrants, according to government data. Nearly 50 percent of the Border Patrol’s 1. 8 million arrests in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2022 turned into immediate deportations to Mexico or the migrants’ home country.
Decisions not to deport migrants are based on other political, logistical and diplomatic reasons. For example, politically, Biden’s leadership has not deported unaccompanied children, most of whom are housed in government shelters until age 18 or placed with a sponsor in the United States.
Other migrants are not deported for humanitarian reasons, such as an acute medical condition. And many cross-border travelers are not deported because Mexico only accepts the return of its Central American citizens and migrants. The United States also cannot deport migrants to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela because of the frigid diplomatic relations with the authoritarian governments of those countries.
Adult immigrants and families who are not deported under Title 42 would likely be released with court notice, sent to long-term immigration and customs detention centers, or deported as part of normal immigration procedures, adding an expedited removal program called “expedited deportation. “”
While 2021 and 2022 set records for border arrests, border patrol arrests are of individual migrants. For example, a migrant who illegally crossed the border 3 times in a month after being deported twice to Mexico counts for 3 arrests.
In fact, with the pandemic, the number of repeat smugglers has increased exponentially, as some migrants enter the United States several times after being returned to Mexico under Title 42, which is not accompanied by the risk of multi-year bans, detention, or scam. sanctions, unlike formal deportations.
After skyrocketing below 15 percent in recent years, adding 7 percent in 2019, the Border Patrol’s recidivism rate rose to 26 percent in 2020 and 27 percent in 2021, according to CBP data. In fiscal year 2022, more than a quarter of all arrests concerned immigrants who had already been arrested through the agency.
Border Patrol arrests along the southern border in 2021 and 2022 surpassed the agency’s 1. 64 million arrests in 2000, a figure that has been the record for two decades.
However, the Border Patrol now has a particularly higher arrest rate than it did in the early 2000s due to advanced surveillance technology, more application resources, and thousands of additional agents.
In fiscal year 2000, the Border Patrol was able to detain 43% of all border workers, according to government estimates, which estimate there were likely 2. 1 million successful border crossings that year in which migrants escaped arrest.
The Border Patrol apprehension rate has increased particularly over the years, reaching 90% in 2019 and 66% in 2020. Detected and undetected illegal border crossings resulting in arrests have also declined from more than 2. 1 million in 2000 to 200,000 in 2020, according to government estimates.
An estimated 660,000 illegal border entries resulted in no arrests in fiscal year 2021, according to unpublished DHS figures, which also show the arrest rate for this year exceeded 70 percent. These figures come with incidents of migrant “flight” that were detected but not apprehended through the Border Patrol, and estimates of undetected entries.
Statistics recommend that there were 2. 3 million border crossings along the southern border in fiscal year 2021 (the sum of border patrol arrests and an estimated success of illegal entries). This is lower than the estimated number of border crossings in 2006 and earlier years, when the success of illegal entries exceeded 1. 5 million.
In fiscal year 2006, for example, there were probably more than 2. 8 million illegal border entries. Meanwhile, in 2000, there were about 3. 7 million illegal border crossings. This latest count is one of the total numbers of border crossings in fiscal year 2022 expected to surpass, even with record degrees of Border Patrol arrests.