Rising border crossings result in new record in December — by 100,000

Rising border crossings result in new record in December — by 100,000
The 2018 migrant caravan sets off from Mexico's southern border. (Image: Pueblo Sin Fronteras)

Border apprehensions by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol set a new record last month, exceeding the prior record by 100,000.

As Ed Morrissey notes, on January 24, the Department of Homeland Security posted the monthly border report, which showed the border in crisis. “Apprehensions blew by the previous record for Decembers by over 100,000 and showed the border surge still increasing in terms of “unique individuals” month-on-month,” he says. As the report observes, there has been “a higher-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts.” Moreover:

  • CBP encountered an average of 5,769 individuals a day at the Southwest border in December 2021, a slight decrease from the November 2021 daily average.
  • The number of unique individuals encountered in December 2021 was 135,040, a 5 percent increase in the number of unique individuals encountered the prior month.
  • In total, there were 178,840 encounters along the Southwest land border in December, a 2 percent increase compared to November. Of those, 23 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months, compared to an average one-year re-encounter rate of 14 percent for FY2014-2019.
  • Two-thirds (64 percent) of encounters were single adults, with 114,993 encounters in December, a 4 percent decrease compared to November.
  • 78,589 encounters, 44 percent of the total, were processed for expulsion under Title 42. 100,251 encounters were processed under Title 8.
    • 68,347 encounters involving single adults (59 percent of all single adult encounters) were processed for expulsion under Title 42, with 46,646 processed under Title 8.
    • 10,005 encounters involving family unit individuals (19 percent of all family unit individuals) were processed for expulsion under Title 42, with 41,619 processed under Title 8.

CNS News highlights the magnitude of the new record, and also describes another troubling trend:

The headline figure in the data released by the CBP on Monday shows that total migrant encounters along the southwest border during December – irrespective of countries of origin – stood at 178,840, an increase of 141.6 percent from the same month in 2020, and up 340.8 percent from December 2019. …

The number of “encounters” with migrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border, and coming from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle, hit a new record high in December – 79,678 – more than ten times higher than the same month in each of the previous four years.

In December of 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017, the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters on the southwest border with migrants from all countries except Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was 7,891, 7,504, 6,050, and 3,046, respectively.

In fact, just three months into fiscal year 2022, CBP apprehensions of migrants who are not from one of those four countries (188,193) is already approaching half of the number recorded for that cohort for the whole of FY 2021 (378,386) – and has well exceeded the figures for the whole of FY 2020 (53,615) and FY 2019 (116,760).

LU Staff

LU Staff

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