What’s the Relation Between Border Apprehensions and Unauthorized Entries? Part 1

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

Four of the Worst Takes on Asylum

News stories about asylum seekers at the southwestern US border are regularly greeted with uninformed comments from politicians, op-ed writers, and social media users. We’ve compiled a list of four of the worst claims about asylum seekers, with explanations of the actual situation. Please feel free to use our list if you encounter any of these claims.

1. They should apply for asylum from within their own countries instead of taking the long, dangerous journey to the United States.

Migrants cannot apply for asylum from outside the United States. The U.S. asylum system is only for people inside the country or at the border.

U.S. law (8 U.S. Code § 1158) defines an asylum seeker as someone seeking refuge at the U.S. border or from within the United States:

Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States [emphasis added] (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.

U.S. law provides a different system for people seeking protection from inside another country. These people are seeking status as “refugees”; this status is defined in 8 U.S. Code § 1101. But people seeking refugee status can’t just visit a U.S. consulate to apply; they usually must go through a “refugee process” involving an international refugee agency. Moreover, this refugee process isn’t available in most of this hemisphere’s nations.

The Obama administration did set up a refugee program called the Central American Minors (CAM) program, and the Biden administration is restarting it. But this program is very limited. During nearly two years of operation under Obama, only about 5,000 Central Americans managed to enter the United States through CAM.

2. Most asylum seekers pass through Mexico—and sometimes other countries—on their way to the U.S. border, so they need to apply for asylum in those countries, not here. Besides, they’d be better off in places where people speak Spanish.

Migrants are not required to apply for asylum in Mexico or other Latin American countries. U.S. law only requires asylum seekers to apply in a country they pass through if that country has a safe third country agreement with the United States.

Here too 8 U.S. Code § 1158 is very specific. The right to seek asylum in the United States is denied only in cases where

the Attorney General determines that the alien may be removed, pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement, to a country (other than the country of the alien’s nationality or, in the case of an alien having no nationality, the country of the alien’s last habitual residence) in which the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection…

Canada is the only country with which the United States has a formal safe third country agreement. The Trump administration negotiated agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras relating to asylum seekers, but even that administration didn’t have the nerve to designate these as “safe third country agreements.” The three Central American countries clearly didn’t meet the required standards for protecting the asylum seeker’s life or freedom, and they are incapable of providing a full and fair procedure for handling asylum claims.

Media coverage often overlooks one important reason asylum seekers come to the United States rather than nearby countries: Many have family and friends here who can give them help and a place to stay as they pursue their claims. This an especially important consideration for the many family groups with small children and few resources.

Incidentally, there are more than 50 million Spanish speakers in the United States. Mexico is the only country in the world with a larger Spanish-speaking population.

3. Asylum seekers need to enter the country properly at a port of entry; otherwise, they can’t apply for asylum.

How asylum seekers enter the country has no effect on their right to apply for asylum; neither does their immigration status.

This is yet another case where the law is perfectly clear: 8 U.S. Code § 1158 states that

Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival  [emphasis added] and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status [emphasis added], may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.

There are various reasons why asylum seekers would decide cross the border between ports of entry, including the presence of dangerous gangs in some Mexican cities near the ports of entry. Border agents also frequently find excuses to impede asylum seekers at the ports of entry. The problem has gotten worse since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the U.S. government has used as a pretext for blocking still more asylum seekers.

4. Most asylum seekers are just trying to get into the United States and disappear. Once inside, most never attend their court hearings.

The government doesn’t provide reliable statistics showing the rate of court attendance by asylum seekers, but studies show that most do in fact attend their hearings.

Determining the rate at which asylum seekers “disappear” is extremely complicated, but the overwhelming evidence is that very few simply remain in the country without pursuing their claims. A University of Pennsylvania Law School study showed a 95 percent attendance rate between 2008 and 2018 for people who had applied for relief through asylum, cancellation of removal, or some other legal option for remaining in the country.

Let’s Call the “Border Crisis” What It Is: Another Big Lie From the Right

GOP pols tour the border in March. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Undocumented immigrants aren’t actually a problem, but the Republican Party has framed them “as criminals and lawbreakers and a grave threat to the nation in order to motivate and mobilize the Republican base, to great effect,” Massey told Truthout. Up until now, the Democrats have failed to push back, he added.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

July 20, 2021

Republican politicians and commentators spent the last week of June promoting their claim that this year’s increase in apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border constitutes — in the words of Fox News host Sean Hannity — “a crisis of a monumental scale.”

 

The campaign’s high point came on June 30 when former president Donald Trump visited a stretch of the border wall near Pharr, Texas, and delivered a number of “questionable statements” about his administration’s supposed enforcement successes.[…]

 

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/lets-call-the-border-crisis-what-it-is-another-big-lie-from-the-right/

 

It’s the US Government’s Immigration Policy That’s Illegal

“The violation of asylum seekers’ rights over the past three years under both Trump and Biden demonstrates how easily a president can ignore and even defy the law — especially when the victims are poor or marginalized and not enough of us speak out.”

By David L. Wilson, Jacobin
July 12, 2021
There’s a crisis on the imaginary line that separates the United States from Mexico, but it’s not the one politicians and media outlets have been talking about.

Earlier this year, the US political class was focused on a supposed “surge” in migration and on serious — but not unprecedented — failures in the treatment of unaccompanied minors. This distracted attention from two far more serious issues: the Trump administration’s misnamed Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), now discontinued, and the ongoing use of the US health code’s Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from entering the country.[…]

Read the full article:
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/07/us-immigration-policy-legality-title-42-biden-trump-asylum-mpp-border-surge-human-rights/

Title 42 victims in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Photo: Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images

What Border Crisis?

Annual Border Patrol Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico Border, FY 1970 – FY 2020

 

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

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.

Hey VP Harris, Here Is a Progressive Way to Address the Root Causes of Migration

VP Harris meets with Guatemalan officials. Photo: Kent Nishimura/LAT/Getty Images

This isn’t to say that progressives should view their program as primarily an answer to the supposed “border crisis.” After all, there’s no reason to fear migration.... But the occasional spikes in border crossings give progressives an opportunity to go on the offensive, to describe the ways that their program would improve the lives of working people both at home and abroad.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

June 13, 2021

The recent focus on the rising number of Central American asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border could have one positive result: it creates an opening that activists can use to promote a progressive foreign and domestic agenda.

 

The two parties are split over how to slow the current rise in migration. Republicans favor the sort of harsh measures that the Trump administration inflicted on migrants; centrist Democrats also support deterrence, but they propose moderating it slightly and spending a few billion dollars to address Central American migration’s root causes. Vice President Kamala Harris’s statements during her June 7-8 trip to Guatemala and Mexico were typical.[…]

 

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/hey-kamala-here-is-a-progressive-way-to-address-the-root-causes-of-migration/

Biden Has Restarted the Central American Minors Program. Will That Help?

On March 10 the U.S. State Department announced officially that it was restarting the Obama administration’s Central American Minors (CAM) program, a process for Central American youths to seek refugee status from within their own countries instead of having to travel across Mexico to the U.S. border.

CAM will definitely benefit a certain number of Central Americans, but it will do little for most of the tens of thousands of Central Americans now seeking asylum from dangers in their countries.

The Obama administration announced the earlier CAM program in the fall of 2014. The proposal sparked wild accusations from the right wing about “a dangerous situation” and “[p]otentially millions” of Central American youths being flown into the United States “with taxpayer dollars.” In reality, as we warned at the time, the program could only help a limited number.

The program, we noted, was

only open to immigrant parents from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras who are “lawfully present” in the United States. They may be legal permanent residents (LPRs), for example, or be covered by temporary protected status (TPS), or they may have had their deportations deferred.

Applicants also had to go through a time-consuming vetting process while remaining in their home country, which ruled out people in immediate danger. And since CAM was administered through the refugee program, the number of minors accepted was restricted by the administration’s proposed ceilings for refugees. In 2015 the ceiling was 4,000 for all of Latin America, and most of the slots were already allocated to Cubans.

How Did the First CAM Turn Out?

As we predicted, relatively few Central American minors were admitted into the United States through the program, which ran for less than two years before being shut down by the Trump White House.

No, CAM didn't bring millions of youths to the U.S.

A total of 2,631 Central American minors ended up being settled here as refugees, we learned in February from a spokesperson for the State Department, which managed the program. Some other minors were admitted to the United States temporarily in a parole program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; these parolees would be able to seek permanent status from within the country through other channels. (Presumably this would include such avenues as protection under the Convention Against Torture.) According to information provided by USCIS spokesperson Victoria Palmer, about 2,400 of these parolees had entered the country by last December; it’s not clear how many have had their cases resolved.*

So how many Central American minors will actually benefit from the resurrected CAM program?

The limitations on the original program still apply with the revived program. The new refugee ceilings the government announced on May 3 are somewhat higher than those for 2015, with a total of 5,000 slots allocated for Latin America and the Caribbean, an increase of 1,000; in addition, Cubans no longer have the priority they had in 2015. So the number of minors granted refugee status or paroled into the country each year will probably be higher than under the Obama administration, but it will remain in the low thousands.

In short, restarting the CAM program will save a number of youths from danger in Central America. This is laudable, but it certainly won’t be enough to stop tens of thousands of Central Americans from fleeing north to escape intolerable conditions at home.

* USCIS’s Palmer told us that approximately 1,450 applicants were paroled into the U.S. before the program was terminated in August 2017. She also provided a copy of a quarterly court status report for S.A. et al v. Trump, the suit challenging the program’s termination. The report, filed Dec. 30, 2020, showed that another 950 minors had been paroled into that country by that date.