AUSTIN, Texas — The number of migrants stopped by authorities at the southern border increased from January to February despite the slowdown in arrivals that historically unfolds in the winter months, according to government data released Tuesday.
Last month, U.S. border officials working along the southern border encountered illegal immigrants 164,973 times, a 7% increase from 153,941 the previous month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The February figure is more than four times the 36,687 seen in February 2020, prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement, CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus described February as seeing a “slight uptick in the number of encounters along the southwest border, with most individuals arriving from Mexico and the Northern Triangle.”
More than 96% of noncitizens encountered by federal law enforcement attempted to enter the country illegally between the ports of entry, while 4% were denied admission at a border crossing. In the first five months of the government’s fiscal year 2021, U.S. border officials have stopped just shy of 1 million people at the southern border.
Three-in-four illegal immigrants were adults traveling by themselves, 12,011 were children traveling alone, and the remaining 26,582 were part of a family. The number of unaccompanied children rose 37%, from 8,760 in January, and border officials detained an average of 520 children daily compared to 295 in January. All unaccompanied children are transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, which then finds them adult sponsors in the United States.
Federal law enforcement resorted to releasing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country rather than returning people to Mexico despite a pandemic public health protocol requiring that no one be detained but immediately turned away to avoid filling detention facilities with people.
Of the 164,973 encounters in February, 91,513 were removed from the country, while 73,640 were taken into custody and either released into the U.S. on parole or detained and placed in removal proceedings.
Federal law enforcement also interdicted higher amounts of some serious drugs in February. Methamphetamine seizures rose 97%, while heroin seizures jumped 173%.
Encounters at the southern border have fluctuated month to month for years, but they dropped to a historic low of 20,000 in March 2020, when the Trump administration ordered that any child, adult, or family caught illegally in the U.S. be sent back to a home country rather than be taken into custody.
But illegal crossings from Mexico began to rise through 2020 as the Border Patrol turned away migrants but was not able to refer people for prosecution, essentially giving migrants unlimited tries to get into the U.S. without facing consequences. The 20,000 figure hit 71,000 in December 2020, weeks before President Joe Biden took office.
After Biden took office in January 2021, the administration stopped turning away children who showed up alone at the border, and in the year that followed, more children showed up at the southern border than at any time in U.S. history.
Biden also attempted to halt deportations for 100 days, suspended border wall construction, and vowed to rescind initiatives that turned away asylum-seekers at the nation’s borders — moves that sent a signal to the world that likely prompted many to travel to the U.S. In addition, the pandemic has had the harshest economic effect on Latin American nations, leading more people to flee to the U.S.
Illegal entry attempts quickly rose after Biden took office. Border Patrol surpassed 169,000 encounters in March and 173,000 in April as Biden eased border policies, including ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, implemented under former President Donald Trump, that had forced migrants to live in Mexico while asylum cases were processed in the courts.
Biden initially downplayed the uptick in illegal migration this spring as “seasonal.” But the numbers continued to spike through the summer, when fewer migrants have historically been apprehended at the border because the heat acts as a deterrent.
Border officials continued to make more than 170,000 encounters in May and June. Encounters topped more than 210,000 in July and 195,000 in August. The numbers dropped through the fall and winter months but have remained at extremely high levels.
This spring, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rolled out a four-pronged plan to stem the flow of migrants illegally entering the country. The plan included addressing the root causes that lead people to leave their home countries, rebuilding the asylum process, improving border security management, and taking down smugglers. To date, the Biden administration has not made substantive progress in any of the four areas.
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The extent of illegal immigration is not fully known because federal data only track those who were intercepted and cannot account for people who were not detected or evaded arrest. Because Border Patrol agents have been pulled from the border to transport and process those arriving, areas of the border have been left unmanned.
