U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigrant arrests along the southern border over the past 11 months, marking the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold, according to figures released Monday by senior Biden administration officials .
In August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants crossing Mexico, the latest figures show, putting authorities on track to make more than 2.3 in the government’s fiscal year 2022, which ends Sept. 30 million arrests. The total, including some people arrested more than once, far surpassed last year’s record of more than 1.7 million arrests.
This year’s historic migration wave was fueled by a rising number of cross-border commuters from outside Mexico and Central America, the two largest traditional sources of illegal entry. Migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba made up more than a third of those detained at the southern border last month, a 175 percent increase from August 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection.
Biden administration officials blamed the governments of those countries, whose strained relations with Washington severely limit the authorities’ ability to send them deportees. Many of the migrants apply for humanitarian protection in the United States and usually have strong asylum applications.
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent surge in encounters at the southwestern US border,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a statement. “Those fleeing repressive regimes pose significant processing and deportation challenges,” he said, using the official term for deportations.
Biden administration officials continue to insist they are building a “safe, orderly and humane” immigration system while accusing the Trump administration of “dismantling” channels for legal migration.
Critics say Biden administration officials have fallen far short of their targets on taking in refugees, and the number of migrants who have died trying to enter the United States this year is at an all-time high. Dozens have drowned in the Rio Grande in recent months, and 53 were killed in June when smugglers in Texas packed migrants into a muggy tractor trailer with a failing cooling system.
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Republican lawmakers blame record number of border crossings on President Biden’s reversal of Trump administration border policy. In recent months, the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have bused more than 10,000 migrants to Washington, New York and other northern destinations in a bid to pressure Democrats by straining aid services in their jurisdictions.
Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) shipped a planeload of Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, transporting them to a wealthy island enclave with limited migrant services.
Biden administration officials also say the high limit numbers are being skewed by repeated border crossing attempts by migrants who have been previously detained. Last month, 22 percent of those arrested had a prior arrest in the previous 12 months, the latest figures show.
One factor that Biden administration officials blame for the repeated crossings is the Title 42 emergency public health policy introduced early in the pandemic, allowing US agents to quickly “expel” some migrants to Mexico. The Biden administration’s attempt to phase out Title 42 was blocked in federal court last spring.
The latest figures show that the percentage of frontier workers designated under Title 42 has fallen and remains far lower under Biden than under President Donald Trump. About 36 percent of the 203,598 “encounters” with migrants in the past month resulted in deportation, up from 83 percent when Biden took office.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Monday the strain on Democrat-run cities will force the administration to view the border hike as a crisis. “Maybe, just maybe, they’ll realize that what’s happening on our border every day is dangerous, unsustainable and a problem we need to work on together,” he said.
Biden officials, defending the administration’s border record, pointed to a drop in the number of Mexican and Central American migrants arrested in the past three months as a sign that its enforcement policies are having some success, including efforts to stop smuggling organizations in targeting Latin America.
Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.