Arrests of families of illegal immigrants at the Mexican
border in December reached a record high for the fourth month in a row. Per
data from Customs and Border Protection, arrests of families along the southern
border have set new records for the past four consecutive months.
CNN
reports that the CBP arrested 27,518 family members in December 2018. This
represents an increase of nearly 240% from December 2017, which had 8,120
arrests. CBP
statistics show an increase in family
arrests on the border since August 2018. Arrest statistics are considered to be
a measure of illegal border crossings under the assumption that more arrests
will be made if more crossings are attempted.
The CBP
website contains a prominent notice saying, “ Due to the lapse in federal
funding, this website will not be actively managed,” and “This website was last
updated on December 21, 2018, and will
not be updated until after funding is enacted.” The statistics presented by CNN
apparently reflect numbers that are not yet available on the CBP website due to
the government shutdown.
While arrests of Family Unit Aliens (FMUA) have increased in
recent months, total arrests have decreased slightly. Total arrests on the
southwest border were 50,753 in December, slightly fewer than the 51,856 in
November. Border traffic often decreases in December due to holidays and colder
weather.
The shift seems to represent a changing pattern of illegal
immigration across the Mexican border. Illegal border crossings reached a 46-year
low in 2017 and have not increased appreciably since. While the total
number of illegal border crossings is low by historical standards, families are
making up a larger share of those who do cross the border.
The larger number of families and children at the border is
overwhelming the ability of CBP to house and care for them. Yet out of the
thousands of arrests at the southern border, only
six were suspected terrorists compared with 41 at the Canadian border. The
crisis at the border is a humanitarian crisis rather than a national security
crisis.
CBP Commissioner Kevin McAlleenan agrees that the big
problem at the border is dealing with the volume of families and minors.
McAlleenan told ABC
News in December 2018, “The -- the humanitarian crisis we’re facing -- that
means there are 60,000 people crossing the border each month -- each of the
last three months. That’s 30,000 families, 5,000 kids per month. That means
we’re going to have 22,000 children come through our system, a system built for
adults who are violators of the law. Now they’re coming in to border patrol
stations as young children. So that -- that’s a huge crisis.”
“The breaking point at the border is because of the volume,”
McAlleenan added, noting that a 2015
case upheld by the 9th Circuit in 2016 led to the current problem of being unable
to complete immigration proceedings for immigrants that arrived with children.
The decision created an incentive for illegal immigrants to bring their
children across the border.
“So basically, that sent a signal, if you arrive with a
child, you’ll be able to stay in the United States,” McAlleenan said. “And
that’s why we’ve seen continued growth month after month of people coming with
children.”
One of the big questions of the hour is whether the humanitarian
crisis provides sufficient grounds for President Trump to use his executive
authority to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress to fund construction
for the wall. The answer is almost certainly no.
Illegal immigration across the southwest border is currently
very low by historical standards. The CBP website,
which may have incomplete data, puts total arrests along the Mexican border at 396,579
for 2018. That’s more than the 2017 total of 310,531
but far less than the 1.6 million arrests from 2000 or the 723,825 who were
arrested 10 years ago in 2008 (CBP
data going back to 2000 can be viewed here).
The illegal immigration problem that we face today is very
different from the one that we faced 20 years ago. In 2015, Pew
Research reported that the Mexican immigration wave was ending as more Mexicans
left the US than entered. Today, the CBP statistics
note that arrests of Mexican families along the border are far fewer than those
from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. This reduction in immigration from
Mexico is partly due to the creation of
more economic opportunity in Mexico by NAFTA as well as the deterioration of
conditions in Central America.
Although he acknowledges that more capacity to house
detainees is needed, CBP’s McAlleenan has an idea on how to solve the problem. Actually, he has several of them.
“So, I think this is a multifaceted problem that requires a
multifaceted solution,” he said. “You
mentioned the legal framework, based on that Flores settlement and the court
decision families are going to be released. So that’s inviting families into
this dangerous journey. We need a sober-minded, nonpartisan look at our
immigration laws to really confront and grapple with the fact that children and
families are coming into this cycle, that’s first and foremost.”
“We also need to invest in Central America,” he added. He advocates
working with Central American nations and Mexico to help fix the problems, such
as violence, food shortages, and malnutrition, that make people want to leave
those countries to come to the US.
He also favors physical barriers for certain parts of the
border, particularly those that “have a dense metropolitan area on both sides
of the border, where people can disappear quickly into a neighborhood in the
U.S. side if we can’t slow them down.”
McAlleenan’s idea of a barrier includes much more than just
a wall. “And what we’re talking about is not just a dumb barrier,” he says, “We’re
talking about sensors, cameras, lighting, access roads for our agents, a system
that helps us secure that area of the border.”
The $5 billion that President Trump has requested would pay
for about 215 miles of McAlleenan’s requested improvements to the border. The
entire border is almost 2,000 miles long.
Originally published
on The
Resurgent
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