WASHINGTON — A historic increase in immigration during President Joe Biden’s term has led to attacks on his re-election bid, as Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers say more people are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He blamed it on the Democratic Party.
Now, President-elect Trump, who campaigned on promises to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants, is poised to take office on Monday as border crossings plummet.
Here are five important facts about migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.
1. Number of arrivals at border is lowest since President Trump left office
When President Trump left office in January 2021, people were stopped at the southern border more than 78,000 times that month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics. That compares to about 96,000 stops last month. The monthly high under the Biden administration was nearly 302,000 in December 2023, and the high under President Trump was just over 144,000 in May 2019.
These figures also include arrivals at land ports of entry, where asylum seekers wait for appointments to legally enter the country, as well as those caught crossing illegally elsewhere along the border. The November and December statistics show for the first time that more immigrants are being processed at ports of entry than are apprehended after entering the U.S. illegally.
In June, the Biden administration began effectively blocking migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S. border with Mexico. This restriction does not apply to people entering the country through official ports of entry or using other legal means.
For part of last year, San Diego became the top destination for illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in decades. This change reflects how long-consistent smuggling routes are starting to change every few months starting in 2021. Part of the reason is the increase in global immigration to the United States following the pandemic.
The San Diego area had 10,117 border crossings in December, second only to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, but down 70% from a year earlier.
2. The number of border arrivals did not increase significantly before Trump took office.
In the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, most parts of the border saw little change in migrant arrivals. But Gloria Chavez, the border patrol chief in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley region who posts local arrest numbers on social media weekly, said 1,206 migrants stopped during the last weekend of December, and the weekend before that. reported that 1,276 people entered the country. This is double the number of arrests in recent weeks, when fewer than 600 people were arrested.
“This is the first quantitative indicator of an increase in immigration since the US election, raising expectations that many immigrants would rush to enter the US before Election Day, which have so far been met. “No,” said Adam Isakson, the advocacy group’s director of defense oversight. The Washington Office on Latin America wrote in a recent newsletter:
That trend appears to have subsided in the new year, with President Chávez reporting 669 arrests in the weekend ending January 5th and 699 arrests in the weekend ending January 12th.
Isakson noted that in 2016, asylum seekers rushed to enter the United States before the start of President Trump’s first term. But border policy is different now, with Biden administration rules already barring most people who enter the country illegally from qualifying for asylum.
“Their only hope is not to be arrested,” he says. “There may be people who are trying, but even if they succeed, it won’t show up in the numbers.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the left-leaning American Immigration Council, said tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico.
“Today, it is more difficult for immigrants to reach the border and seek asylum than at any time in modern U.S. history,” he said. “Despite significant increases in border infrastructure, the United States remains a safe and secure place in the eyes of people around the world.”
3. The U.S. border once attracted immigrants primarily from Mexico and Central America. Now people come here from all over the world
The United States has historically attracted immigrants from its southern neighbors. Mexicans still make up the highest percentage of those seeking entry, but arrivals from other countries have also increased rapidly over time. During President Trump’s first term, people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador flocked to the U.S. border due to insecurity in their home countries.
That started to change around 2019. During President Biden’s term, more people from Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia began arriving. People came from as far away as Afghanistan, Ukraine and China.
The San Diego area is considered the most bordered and attracts people from all over the world.
Chinese immigrants began arriving in record numbers in search of jobs and freedom from an oppressive government, with arrests rising from just 949 in 2022 to more than 37,000 last year. Republicans took advantage of this increase and treated it as a national security issue.
That number began to decline last year after the Biden administration imposed asylum restrictions and Ecuador began requiring Chinese nationals to obtain visas to travel.
4. Immigrant detentions are on the rise again since COVID-19 infections declined
Government efforts to detain people who violate immigration laws have seen significant fluctuations in recent years. During President Trump’s first term, the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached a historic high of more than 55,000.
Courts have ordered some immigration detention centers to reduce capacity as the coronavirus spreads through lockups and detainees die. The number of people in detention reached its lowest level in February 2021, the month after Biden took office as president, at about 13,000 people. (The Adelanto ICE detention center east of Los Angeles is maintained under a coronavirus-era court order barring new detainees, and the population of the roughly 2,000-bed facility has been reduced to just two. )
As of December 29, more than 39,000 people, most of them without criminal records, were being held in private immigration detention facilities, according to nonpartisan data research group TRAC. This number has been fairly stable over the last year and has generally fluctuated between 35,000 and just under 40,000 people since late 2023.
That number is widely expected to rise again after President Trump takes office as he seeks to fulfill his promise of mass deportations.
5. Historic admissions under Biden add to already huge backlog in immigration courts
Immigrants in deportation proceedings can file a lawsuit before an immigration judge. The backlog in immigration courts now exceeds 3.7 million cases due to historic migrant arrivals under the Biden administration, according to TRAC.
Biden inherited an immigration court system that was already backlogged with 1.3 million cases. When Trump took office in 2017, there were just over 542,000 pending lawsuits.
In fiscal year 2024, immigration courts closed more than 900,000 cases. This is the highest number in a single year. New cases have fallen significantly as fewer migrants are being processed at the border.
Los Angeles County has about 115,000 cases, the second highest number after Miami-Dade County. Experts say the backlog can only be cleared by spending more money on hundreds of immigration judges and support staff and making systemic reforms.
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