Politicians and the media have spent much of this year creating panic over the number of border apprehensions, which have now reached their highest level in two decades. Very few ask the obvious question: do more border apprehensions mean that more people are now living in the United States without authorization?
It’s true that the number of border apprehensions tends to mirror the number of unauthorized entries, but the relation between the two numbers—that is, the apprehension rate—is complicated and is constantly changing. A million border apprehensions now may not mean the same thing as miallion border apprehensions meant in 2000. This year they clearly don’t.
Understanding Border
Apprehensions
There’s an easy way to
determine the number of apprehensions at the Mexico-U.S. border: the government
keeps records, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), makes them available on the web. But the nature of these apprehensions keeps changing.
In 2000, for example, Border
Patrol agents would frequently just ID the migrants they had apprehended and
then release them; the official name for this is “voluntary return.” As a
result, an apprehended migrant might simply attempt a second crossing the next
day and be apprehended again. This recidivism meant that the number of
apprehensions was significantly higher than the number of individual migrants
apprehended.
The “voluntary return” approach
was largely dropped during the administration of George W. Bush. The policy was
now to put as many migrants as possible through the deportation process, and
many were also criminally prosecuted under a section of the immigration
code—rarely used in the past—that made unauthorized border crossing a
misdemeanor with a six-month sentence for first offenders; there are harsher penalties for second
offenses. These measures made it less likely that an apprehended migrant would make
a second attempt and reduced the recidivism rate.
Other changes also affected
the number of apprehensions at the southwestern border. The Border Patrol has more than doubled in size since 2000, and some 650 miles of barriers were installed on
the southwestern border during the century’s first decade. These factors made
migrants significantly more likely to be caught if they tried to enter, while the
increased likelihood of getting caught presumably discouraged people from making
the attempt.
Southwest Border
Apprehension and Border Patrol Staffing Levels, FY 1975-2017
 |
| Source: Migration Policy Institute, 2018 |
Factoring in Asylum
Seekers
The number of border
apprehensions declined dramatically during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and remained
low for a decade, except for a significant increase in 2019. A number of
factors contributed to this reduction—the lack of employment opportunities in
the U.S., for example, a lower birth rate in Mexico, and the higher level of border enforcement.
There was another important
change: a new group of migrants appeared on the scene. Throughout history, the
people crossing the border had tended to be adult males, mostly Mexicans, who
were looking for work. Starting in 2014, more and more of the migrants being
apprehended were unaccompanied minors and family unit members, most of them
Central Americans seeking asylum.
Unlike the single males, who
often try to evade capture by entering through dangerous but less well
patrolled sectors, these new migrants tend to enter in safer areas and turn
themselves in directly to Border Patrol agents in order to start the process of
establishing asylum claims. Immigration opponents talk about migrants “sneaking
across the border,” but in reality, asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors
often literally walk into the arms of waiting Border Patrol agents.
The ease with which asylum
seekers and unaccompanied children can be apprehended naturally led to an
increase in the apprehension rate.
The Title 42 Effect
The COVID-19 pandemic has
been a major new factor in apprehensions since March 2020. Apprehensions of
asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors declined during the pandemic’s first
months due to lockdowns in the sending countries. But the rate started to rise
rapidly soon afterwards—largely as a result of a Trump administration policy of
invoking Title 42 of the health code to exclude almost all non-citizens from
entering the U.S.
Under Title 42, which the
Biden administration has continued in part, many migrants apprehended at the
southwestern border are simply IDed and then expelled back into Mexico. This is
in effect a resumption of the old “voluntary return” policy, and although the
returns are far from voluntary, the new policy has the same effect: expelled
migrants keep repeating their attempts to enter.
Before Title 42 the annual
recidivism rate averaged 15 percent. By June 2021 it had more than doubled to 38 percent,
thus significantly increasing the number of apprehensions.
Part 2: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_24.html
Part 3: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_26.html
Part 4: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_28.html
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