The number of people arrested for attempting to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico declined for a seventh consecutive month and now stands at one-quarter of what it was at its peak last May.
Data released Thursday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows 32,858 people who tried to illegally cross from Mexico into Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas were taken into custody by Border Patrol agents in December. That number is down from 132,887 last May, when border activity peaked due to a surge of Central American families.
The CBP uses the number of arrests as an indicator of how many people tried to illegally enter the country, since it is not able to stop every person who tries. The Border Patrol is one organization within the CBP, and its agents work on the land between official crossing points.
The number of arrests dropped significantly in the first few months after Mexico deployed thousands of federal police and military to the U.S. and Guatemalan borders to deter illegal immigration. That came after President Trump followed through on a threat to impose tariffs on Mexican imports if the country did not take action.
In December, roughly two-thirds of the total 32,858 arrests were of single adults, 10% were of unaccompanied children, and the remaining were members of families.
Historically, single Mexican men have been the majority of people arrested at the southern border. That changed in fiscal 2019, which ran from October 2018 through September 2019. Roughly half of the 850,000 people taken into custody arrived with a family. Of the 400,000 family members, only one-quarter sought asylum, but all were released into the U.S. without the legal documentation that they need to be here.
In addition to those who tried to enter between official crossing points, known as ports of entry, CBP officers reported that 7,762 people who tried to cross through a vehicular or pedestrian border crossing were denied. A total of 126,000 were turned away at ports of entry in the government’s fiscal 2019.
The Trump administration began turning away asylum-seekers who sought to make claims at border crossings and limited each day the number of people who could do so. It then implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, which mandate the large majority of asylum-seekers be returned to Mexico while their case waits to be heard by a U.S. federal immigration judge.
