Before the end of September, the United States broke a record for immigrant arrests at the border with Mexico this Monday. For the first time, the number of people arrested after crossing the Rio Grande into US territory has surpassed two million people in one year. Although expected according to various forecasts, the figure puts more pressure on President Joe Biden’s administration, which is maneuvering to keep irregular immigration from becoming, alongside the economy, the central issues guiding November’s general election. The milestone comes at a time when Republican governors are using immigrants as part of a political game, sending them on buses and chartered planes to Democratic strongholds in the north of the country.
Border guards arrested 203,598 people in August. It was the culmination of an intense summer, the season when the Mexican-US border sees the greatest migratory flow, and May already heralded the upward trend. 293,000 people were arrested this month, already an increase from April. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities estimate that more than 2.3 million arrests will have been made by the end of fiscal year 2022 (which is quantified from September 2021 to the end of this month). That figure assumes the same person may have been arrested more than once, thanks to a rule imposed by Donald Trump during the pandemic and preserved by Biden. This allows for the quick deportation of immigrants who can attempt the crossing again days later.
The historical number was reached thanks to the increase in arrivals of Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans in the United States. These represent a third of those arrested in August. “Failed communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are causing a new wave of migration in the western hemisphere, including increasing fears at the southern border,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a statement . The official explained this Monday that the lack of diplomatic ties with these three countries has made it difficult to deport these citizens back to their countries.
In addition, citizens of Russia and Ukraine, affected by the war in Eastern Europe started by Vladimir Putin, were added during the fiscal year, although these types of immigrants were received with a different procedure by the immigration authorities.
Overall, the CBP will have made 600,000 more arrests this fiscal year than last year, which ended with 1.7 million encounters, the euphemism used to report surveillance operations at the border with Mexico.
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Although migration of Mexicans is still at higher levels than it was during the Trump administration, incarceration of Mexicans and Central Americans fell by 43% compared to the same figure in August 2021. The drop is in response to Washington’s pressure on regional ones governments to control this and reduce inflows from sending countries, a task that has fallen into the hands of Vice President Kamala Harris. A Department of Homeland Security official said Monday that the US has mobilized 23,000 agents along the borders of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to stop migrants from transiting north. Efforts have borne fruit, according to the spokesman, as the advance of around 57,000 migrants has been halted.
This is not only the busiest year. It is also the deadliest for those making the journey from their countries, especially if they are from the northern triangle of Central America. The Border Patrol reported in August that in the current fiscal year the deaths of more than 200 migrants have been documented in the Del Río district alone, the hot zone for irregular immigration and where there has been a sharp rise thanks to the rise in the number of drownings in the river . The number is a huge jump compared to deaths in other years. Between 1998 and 2020, the average number of deaths in this area never exceeded 50. Two years ago, inclusive, the total number of deaths at the more than three thousand kilometers long common border was 247.
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