Annual Border Patrol Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico Border, FY 1970 – FY 2020
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| Figure 1 from "Rising Border Encounters in 2021" |
On June 24 the American
Immigration Council released an
updated version of its indispensable fact sheet
on this year’s border encounters. Like the previous versions, this one
demonstrates that there actually isn’t a “border crisis”—at least not the one
that the right wing and much of media have been hyping for the past five
months.
Of course there are real crises
at the border: the after-effects of the previous administration’s “Remain
in Mexico” policy, the present administration’s maintenance of Trump’s
expulsions under Title 42 of the health code, and the continuing failures, despite some improvements, to provide acceptable treatment to minors
who have crossed the border. But the crisis of hundreds of thousands of
foreigners rushing across an “open border”
is simply a fiction.
The statistics do show that more
immigrants are being encountered (or apprehended) by the Border Patrol than at
any other time in fifteen years. But the fact of more encounters doesn’t
necessarily mean more migrants are successfully entering the country.
The Border Crossings Have
Declined…
The “border crisis”
narrative ignores differences in the types of encounter, and in the types of
people crossing the border. The Council’s fact sheet carefully breaks down these
differences.
“For nearly a 35-year period
beginning in the mid-1970s, the Border Patrol routinely apprehended at least
1,000,000 migrants a year,” the fact sheet notes. A still greater number of
migrants succeeded in entering the country without authorization. For example,
in fiscal year (FY) 2000 the Border Patrol reported 1.7 million apprehensions, but
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “estimates that there were an
additional 2.1 million successful unlawful entries.”
The situation changed
rapidly as the number of Border Patrol agents increased—from “11,264 in FY 2005
to 21,444 in FY 2011.” The result was that by fiscal 2012 DHS estimated that
for the first time, more border crossers were apprehended than succeeded in
entering. Moreover, by then the Great Recession and changing conditions in
Mexico had reduced the number of Mexicans seeking work here: “migration from
Mexico declined sharply, falling from 1,089,092 apprehensions in FY 2006 to
340,252 apprehensions in FY 2011.”
But 2014 brought a new
phenomenon, an increase in migrants seeking asylum or arriving as unaccompanied
minors. U.S. law has special provisions for asylum seekers, along with unaccompanied
minors from countries other than
Canada and Mexico. These migrants usually turn themselves in to the Border
Patrol; they know that if they pass an initial screening for “credible fear,”
they will allowed to remain in the United States temporarily to pursue their
cases.
There have been a number of
spikes in border crossings by these migrants—in 2014, 2016, 2019, and this
year. Each of these spikes was treated as a “border crisis” by the media, although none approached the level of unauthorized entry in the years before the Great
Recession.
…But Border Encounters
Have Increased
Asylum seekers and unaccompanied
minors aren’t the majority of the border crossers this year, however. What about the other border crossers?
One reason this group has grown
large is the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42 to push migrants
back from the border without detaining and processing them. “In the first four
full months of the Biden administration, 65.4% of all people encountered by the
Border Patrol at the border were expelled under Title 42,” the Council notes.
As a result, a migrant who has been pushed back can simply try again. For example, 38 percent of the migrants encountered in May had attempted to enter previously within this fiscal year.
Each of the migrant’s
attempted crossings can result in encountering a Border Patrol agent, and this is then reported as a new border encounter—even though the migrant may never
have succeeded in entering the United States.
Individuals
Apprehended by the Border Patrol and Not Expelled, 10/12 – 5/21
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| Figure 4 from "Rising Border Encounters in 2021" |
This results in border
encounter statistics that only reflect attempts to enter this country, not
actual entries. In fact, unauthorized entry has remained relatively
low—significantly lower than it was fifteen years ago. As the Council’s
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted in a June 14 tweet,
the number of migrants who get across the border without being apprehended is
probably about five times lower than the number in 2006.
If the current situation is
a border crisis, then the United States has been experiencing a border crisis
at least since the 1970s, under eight different administrations.
