According to newly released government data, the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants along the southwestern border exceeded two million in a single year for the first time ever. This indicates that the historic rate at which undocumented immigrants are entering the country has not slowed down.
The number of people taken into custody at the border rose somewhat from July to August, bringing the overall number of detentions to more than 2.1 million for the first 11 months of the fiscal year 2022, which will come to a close on September 30.
Before Customs and Border Protection’s regularly scheduled monthly statistics release on Monday, officials from the Biden administration took the rare step of providing a background briefing to a select group of reporters. Officials pointed out that the number of evictions that took place over the course of the most recent year — more than 1.3 million — was more than that of any prior year.
Due to the fact that the midterm elections are drawing near and Republicans are campaigning on the idea that the border is insecure, the administration has made an effort in recent months to avoid matters pertaining to immigration. An escalation of efforts to show Democratic areas inside the country what the situation is like on the southwestern border occurred last week when two Republican governors paid for the transportation of dozens of immigrants who had been released from government custody. The immigrants were transported to the states of Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
The immigrants who were assigned to those places entered the nation illegally via the southwest border and went through a series of security checks conducted by border authorities before being temporarily allowed to remain in the country pending the outcome of their removal procedures. They are a part of a larger migration of individuals all over the world who are being forced to escape their places of origin. According to a report published by the United Nations in June, one in every 78 persons throughout the globe is deemed to be a displaced person. It is believed that Venezuelans make up the second biggest group of individuals who have been forced to go elsewhere in the globe.
In August, the number of immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras caught crossing the southwestern border was nearly the same as the number of immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. This represents a significant shift in the nationalities of people coming to the United States compared to the years prior to this one. Since August 2021, the number of illegal immigrants who are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has decreased by 43 percent; nevertheless, the number of undocumented immigrants who are from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has increased by 175 percent.
“Failing Communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere,” the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Chris Magnus, said in a statement on Monday. “This recent increase in encounters at the southwest border of the United States is just one example of this trend,” Magnus added.
Officials in the United States are unable to repatriate the migrants to their home nations as they do with immigrants from other countries since the United States does not have diplomatic ties with the three countries in question.
According to data that has been submitted in monthly status update filings in legal challenges to this administration’s immigration policies, more than one million people have been released by border authorities to face removal proceedings since President Biden’s first days in office. This administration’s immigration policies are being challenged in court.
Many of the immigrants who have been crossing the southwestern border are doing so in the hopes of receiving asylum, a legal right that was severely curtailed by several policies enacted by the Trump administration at a time when there was also a rise in the number of people migrating to the United States. One of these policies is the use of a public health regulation that is known as Title 42, which the Biden administration attempted to terminate at the end of the month of May. The administration’s attempt to rescind the injunction was challenged in court by Louisiana and several other largely Republican states.
The trip to the United States is arduous, fraught with risk, and prohibitively costly; as a result, migrants often pay smugglers to help them make the crossing. More than 23,000 law enforcement personnel and agents have been sent to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras by the administration of President Joe Biden in an attempt to combat the drug smuggling networks in those countries. On Monday, one of the administration officials who spoke on background said that authorities estimated that this has prevented 57,000 immigrants a month from reaching the southern border. In June, Mr. Biden made the announcement on the countersmuggling effort.