The Biden administration is not returning all adults who illegally cross the border from Mexico into the United States despite top officials’ claims otherwise.
Just 13% of the nearly 13,000 migrants who arrived with a family member at the southern border last week were immediately returned to Mexico or their home country, according to Axios. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has repeatedly said in recent weeks that the U.S. is expelling most adults and families at the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the new data are not in line with his claim.
In February, the Border Patrol encountered nearly 100,000 people who illegally attempted to cross over the southern border, including nearly 10,000 children without parents and 19,000 people in families. Sixty percent of those families were not returned to Mexico, according to federal data. The new data reveal a dramatic drop in the past several weeks in the share of families are being returned.
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The number of families encountered at the border last month is higher than in previous months but does not put the U.S. on track to hit totals seen during the 2019 humanitarian crisis, when 473,000 people showed up with a family member. At the height of that crisis in the month of May 2019, more than 88,000 people came over with a family member.
A change in Mexican law is a leading reason that federal authorities in the U.S. are struggling to respond to families arriving in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The Mexican law blocked families with children who are 7 years of age and older from being returned to Mexico on the basis that shelters cannot accommodate the returns. In response, Border Patrol cannot turn away parents with young children who illegally cross the border and must take them into custody. Families are supposed to be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security that has been underfunded and court-ordered in some situations from being able to hold as many families as are in Border Patrol’s custody.
Border Patrol stations are overwhelmed with families and releasing families out of the backdoors of holding stations due to a shortage of space at ICE facilities for families. Because of a U.S. court agreement known as the Flores settlement, families can only be held by the government for 20 days, which is shorter than immigration claims can be decided by the courts.
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Last March, the Border Patrol began immediately returning all adults and children to their home countries in an effort to avoid filling detention centers with people amid the coronavirus pandemic.
