The United States exceeds one million arrests at the border in nine months

A Border Patrol agent watches immigrants cross the Rio Grande in Texas on June 15. Eric Gay / AP

The border with Mexico remains the Achilles heel for the Biden Administration.

The United States has recorded 1.2 million arrests of illegal immigrants since the start of fiscal year 2021, last October.

Even with three months to go before the end of the period, the year has already broken the million mark, which had not been exceeded in 15 years.

June has contributed abundantly to this account.

The immigration authorities made more than 188,000 arrests last month, an increase of 4.5% compared to May.

The numbers are pure fuel for the narrative of Republicans and supporters of former President Donald Trump, who long for a strong hand on the border.

This is while the Democratic government asks for time to rebuild the immigration system broken in four years of Trump.

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June makes it clear that the “don't come” said by Kamala Harris in early June in Guatemala did not have the expected impact on the Northern Triangle countries. Of the total number of actions, or encounters, that took place in June on the southern border of the United States, 76,751 were with people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, migrants fleeing poverty, violence and climate change and whom the vice president promised Invest in the root causes that motivate expulsion. The number of migrants from this region increased by 11% compared to May, but it does represent a decrease compared to the arrival of those countries in April (79,200) and March (85,600), which was the month when the crisis broke out at the border at President Biden, a situation that is not yet controlled.

If this pace continues, 2021 will become the one with the most arrests since 2000, when 1.7 million people were arrested. 2006 was the last year to record more than a million apprehensions in a fiscal year.

Mexicans continue to be the group of migrants who arrive the most in the United States. However, the crossing of inhabitants from the neighboring country did register a significant decrease compared to May. In June, there were 64,854 encounters with Mexicans who crossed illegally, while a month earlier there were almost 71,000. This was one of the points of concern that Harris raised with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a closed-door meeting at the official hearing he held in early June. Mexican authorities, at the request of Washington, have tightened immigration operations to cut off the flow of people reaching the Rio Grande.

The number of individuals taken into custody during fiscal year 2021 by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents is 455,000, down from the 490,000 that had been registered at this point in 2019. CBP reports monthly of the number of encounters or actions that its uniformed officers take with the people they meet on the border line. The pandemic, however, forced the Donald Trump government to adopt an emergency directive, known as Title 42, which allows the hot expulsion of arriving people, so many individuals try to cross again. Some versions have indicated that the White House is studying ending Title 42 in the coming weeks.

Mexico has become not only a country of transit. Also of destination. The Mexican government said Wednesday that asylum requests for the first half of 2021 have been the highest ever. Only in June they exceeded 10,400, to add more than 51,000 so far this year, 20,000 more than in the same period of 2019. The Refugee Aid Commission points out that by the end of the year the 2019 mark will surely be exceeded , which was the highest.

Donald Trump was recently at the border wall he started building in Texas. His visit came just five days after a Kamala Harris to the area, who has been appointed by Biden of crisis management at the border. The former president took advantage of the moment to meet with some local authorities of the Republican state, who said that the area is in the worst condition and that they have even committed state money to continue the construction of the wall. Sheriffs and former officials of the last Administration criticized Biden's immigration policy and blamed the Democrat for the rise in crime and the wave of violence that has been registered in some cities. “All Biden had to do is go to the beach. If I had done nothing we would have the safest border ever seen,I was getting better and better, ”joked Trump, who has decided to continue using the immigration issue as his main asset to continue attracting attention in the media. At least until the border continues to make headlines.

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