Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

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93,108 Migrants Arriving as Family Units Entered Border Patrol Custody in August

Chart: Unaccompanied Children and Families Encountered at the U.S. Border (Border Patrol)

106,657 child and family migrant encounters in August

				12-Jan						12-Jul						13-Jan						13-Jul						14-Jan						14-Jul						15-Jan						15-Jul						16-Jan						16-Jul						17-Jan						17-Jul						18-Jan						18-Jul						19-Jan						19-Jul						20-Jan						20-Jul						21-Jan						21-Jul						22-Jan						22-Jul						23-Jan						23-Jul	
Unaccompanied Children	1465	1446	1259	1635	2077	2755	2703	2541	2071	2118	2289	2044	2333	2392	2218	2260	2986	4120	4206	3985	3384	3607	3718	3550	4181	4344	4327	3706	4845	7176	7701	10578	10620	5499	3138	2426	2519	2610	2858	2118	2385	3126	3273	2943	3833	4182	4638	4485	4943	5604	6757	3089	3092	4209	5162	5594	4750	5026	5767	5699	6704	7346	7187	4405	1910	1041	997	1473	1949	2475	2987	2961	3153	3973	4063	3202	3115	4141	4287	6388	5115	3938	4393	4360	4964	5257	4753	5105	6817	8956	8880	11475	7372	5554	3722	3165	2841	3308	3223	2680	3070	2974	712	966	1603	2426	2998	3756	4687	4475	4852	5688	9263	18716	16900	13878	15022	18681	18492	14180	12625	13745	11704	8607	11779	13892	11857	14420	14929	13003	10993	11539	11654	12780	11829	9034	10418	11853	11062	9443	6736	10041	13549
Family Unit Members	896	848	732	1026	936	1227	1208	925	791	898	918	711	799	776	746	847	923	1310	1384	1315	1250	1651	1907	1947	2414	2786	3311	2286	3281	5752	6511	12772	16330	7405	3296	2301	2162	2415	2891	1622	2041	2782	3087	3861	4042	4503	5159	5273	6025	6471	8973	3143	3050	4451	5620	6783	6627	7569	9353	9609	13115	15588	16139	9300	3123	1126	1118	1580	2322	3389	4631	4191	4836	7016	8119	5654	5475	8873	9648	9485	9449	9258	12760	16658	23116	25164	27507	24188	36530	53204	58713	84486	57358	42543	25049	15824	9721	9006	8595	5161	4610	3455	716	979	1581	1989	2609	3808	4634	4172	4248	7066	19289	53411	48297	40816	50106	76572	79899	62577	41556	43279	49437	30419	25165	34052	37082	51166	44071	42851	39305	44579	46749	49827	60844	25829	25643	33269	46555	45028	31266	60160	93108

Data table

Late on September 22, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border during August 2023.

August was the number-one month ever for Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants traveling as members of families. “Family Unit” apprehensions totaled 93,108 last month.

August was the number-12 month ever for Border Patrol apprehensions of unaccompanied migrant children: 13,549 last month.

Add those numbers, and Border Patrol apprehended 106,657 child and family migrants in August 2023, a record.

August was the number-28 month since October 2011 for Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants traveling as single adults: 74,402 last month. Single adult numbers have been dropping since the end of the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy, which ironically made repeat crossings easier because of less time in custody.

Darién Gap Migration Through August 2023

Panama just posted updated data, detailed by country, gender, and age, about migration through the Darién Gap in August.

Annual Migration Through Panama’s Darién Gap

2023: Venezuela 60%, Ecuador 13.0%, Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 12.9%, China 4%, Colombia 3%, India 1.0%, All Others <1%

Since 2010: Venezuela 43%, Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 25%, Ecuador 9%, Cuba 8%, Colombia 2.0%, All Others <2%

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023 (Aug)
Venezuela						2	6	18	65	78	69	2819	150327	201288
Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile)	0	1	0	2	2	8	16742	40	420	10490	5331	101072	27287	42959
Ecuador		15	18	4	1	14	93	50	51	31	40	387	29356	43536
Cuba	79	18	1154	2010	5026	24623	7383	736	329	2691	245	18600	5961	700
Colombia		65	24	26	9	32	16	36	13	23	21	169	5064	11276
China	268	9	11	1		1		6			3	77	2005	12979
India	12	11	48		1	1	20	1127	2962	1920	39	592	4094	3338
Nepal	29	9	213	297	468	2426	1619	2138	868	254	56	523	1631	1659
Bangladesh	53	45	89	398	377	559	580	506	1525	911	123	1657	1884	1158
Other Countries	118	110	220	313	291	1623	3601	2119	2988	5704	538	7830	20675	14811

Data table

It broke all records: 81,946 people passed through this treacherous jungle region in 31 days. The previous monthly record, set in October 2022, was 59,773.

In the first eight months of this year, 333,704 people have migrated through the Darién. Ten years ago, in 2013, the full-year total was 3,051 migrants. In 2011, it was just 281.

Monthly Migration Through Panama’s Darién Gap

August 2023: Venezuela 77%, Ecuador 11%, Colombia 4%, China 3%, Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 2%, all others <1%

January 22-Aug 23: Venezuela 60%, Ecuador 13%, Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 12%, Colombia 2.8%, China 2.6%, all others <2%

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23	Apr-23	May-23	Jun-23	Jul-23	Aug-23
Venezuela	1421	1573	1704	2694	9844	11359	17066	23632	38399	40593	668	1374	2337	7097	20816	25395	26409	18501	38033	62700
Ecuador	100	156	121	181	527	555	883	1581	2594	8487	6350	7821	6352	5203	2772	2683	3059	5052	9773	8642
Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile)	807	627	658	785	997	1025	1245	1921	2642	4525	5520	6535	12063	7813	8335	5832	3633	1743	1548	1992
Colombia	48	72	59	72	248	287	407	569	1306	1600	208	188	333	637	1260	1634	1645	894	1884	2989
China	32	39	56	59	67	66	85	119	136	274	377	695	913	1285	1657	1683	1497	1722	1789	2433
India	67	74	88	172	179	228	431	332	350	604	813	756	562	872	1109	446	161	65	96	27
Cuba	367	334	361	634	567	416	574	589	490	663	535	431	142	36	35	59	59	74	123	172
Afghanistan	1	3	40	31	67	82	162	128	180	551	379	596	291	276	359	386	192	217	321	467
Peru	17	23	18	29	88	109	136	247	365	438	34	39	39	100	261	277	394	209	376	653
Other Countries	1842	1361	1722	1477	1310	1506	1833	1986	1742	2038	1748	1862	1602	1338	1495	1902	1913	1245	1444	1871

Data table

60 percent of this year’s migrants through the Darién Gap have been citizens of Venezuela: 201,288 people. In August, the migrant population was 77 percent Venezuelan: 62,700 people.

Jaw-dropping numbers from a region that was viewed as all but impenetrable until perhaps 2021. And there’s little reason why they won’t continue to increase. Any plan to “block” migrants on this route would require a staggeringly large and complex operation that would create additional challenges, like what to do with tens of thousands of stranded migrants.

UNODC: 230,000 hectares of coca in Colombia last year

According to the Colombian daily El Espectador, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime detected 230,000 hectares of coca in Colombia in 2022. That amount—which extends the dark blue line in the chart below to 2022—would be the most coca that the UN agency has detected in any year since it began issuing estimates in 1999.

Chart: Coca Cultivation in Colombia

Hectares	US Estimate	UN Estimate
1994	44.7	
1995	50.9	
1996	67.2	
1997	79.5	
1998	101.8	
1999	122.5	160.1
2000	136.2	163.3
2001	169.8	144.8
2002	144.4	102
2003	113.9	86
2004	114.1	80
2005	144	86
2006	157	78
2007	167	99
2008	119	81
2009	116	73
2010	100	62
2011	83	64
2012	78	48
2013	81	48
2014	112	69
2015	159	96
2016	188	146
2017	209	171
2018	208	169
2019	212	154
2020	245	143
2021	234	204
2022		230

Colombia was governed for just over the first seven months of 2022 by Iván Duque, and for the remaining less than five months by Gustavo Petro.

Petro was still putting together his government by the time 2022 ended. His drug policy team only published their counter-drug strategy this past weekend. While that is a notably slow pace, it was not the cause for 2022’s result.

Petro has sought to de-emphasize forced eradication of small-scale coca farmers’ crops, which places the government in an adversarial relationship with poor people in historically abandoned territories. Through July, forced eradication is down 79 percent over the same period in 2022. Instead, the new strategy document promotes interdiction, targeting cocaine production and related finances, and other strategies.

Still, critics of the Petro government’s choices will use the 230,000 figure to oppose them. It’s possible, though, that the 2023 coca acreage figure could be reduced, because a historic drop in prices may be making the crop less attractive to many growers.

Asylum requests in Mexico continue on a record-breaking pace

Data table

The Mexican government’s refugee agency, COMAR, just posted data through August about the number of migrants from other countries who have applied for asylum in Mexico. Eight months into the year, COMAR is nearly at 100,000 applications, on pace to reach, or be just below, 150,000 by the end of the year. Mexico appears certain to break 2021’s record of 129,768 asylum applications.

Most applicants are from Haiti, Honduras, and Cuba. As Gretchen Kuhner of Mexico’s non-governmental Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI) pointed out in last week’s WOLA Podcast, a lot of migrants stranded in Mexico are being channeled into the asylum system by a lack of other options for having a legal status in the country.

Entire Collection of Border Infographics is Updated

As you can tell from the last few posts here, I’ve been updating my collection of border and migration infographics (a fancy word for “charts”). I’m done now.

Those all live in a section at WOLA’s Border Oversight website. There, they’re organized by category and by when they were last updated. For nearly all of them, I’ve now added a link to a Google spreadsheet with the underlying data.

Or you can just download them as a 98-page PDF document, which also lives at the shortcut bit.ly/wola_border_infographics.

Migrant Apprehensions per Border Patrol Agent per Year at the U.S.-Mexico Border

I haven’t updated this one in a while. Here is a chart of migrants apprehended per Border Patrol agent per year between 1992 and 2022. The data table is here.

With 133 migrants per agent, 2022 saw the largest number since the year 2000. Unlike 2000, though, 35 migrants per agent were unaccompanied children or family unit members, nearly all of whom were trying to be apprehended—no pursuit needed—in order to seek asylum.

The same describes many of the 95 single adults, and of those seeking to avoid capture, many were double-counted because the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy facilitated repeat attempts to cross. In 2000, nearly all migrants were single adult Mexican citizens who did not request asylum.

Sources:

Record-breaking month for migration through Honduras

Honduras recorded an unprecedented number of migrants transiting the country in July 2023: 46,779 people.

Screenshot of linked page showing graph with 46,779 “migrantes irregulares” coming through Honduras in July 2023; the next highest month on the graph, which goes back to 2014, is 30,775 in October 2022.

Through July 30, the month saw 52% more migration than second-place October 2022, and represented a 75% increase over June 2023.

Countries with over 1,000 migrants through July 30 were Venezuela (51% of the total), Cuba, Ecuador, Mauritania, Haiti, Senegal, and Egypt.

96 percent of registered migrants did so in the Nicaragua border-zone towns of Danlí and Trojes, in El Paraíso department. We visited that zone at the very end of April, and posted photos and a report, when the flow of migrants was less than half what it was at the end of July.

June at the border saw a big move toward the ports of entry

June migration data from the U.S.-Mexico border, posted yesterday by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), show a 42 percent drop, from May, in the number of migrants who crossed the border in the areas between the ports of entry (official border crossings), ending up in Border Patrol custody. There is a lot of red (reductions) in this chart of tables:

**All Border Patrol Migrant Encounters at the U.S.-Mexico Border**

Includes only those encountered between ports of entry.
Shaded countries’ citizens may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42, or deported there under the 2023 asylum rule.

**April 2023**
Mexico 59,666
Venezuela 29,731
Colombia 17,513
Guatemala 14,309
Other 13,777
Honduras 12,113
Peru 8,378
India 8,012
Ecuador 6,197
El Salvador 4,391
China 3,182
Brazil 2,898
Turkey 2,292
Nicaragua 372
Cuba 323
Russia 321
Haiti 235
Romania 197

**May 2023**
Mexico 43,614
Venezuela 28,055
Honduras 17,813
Colombia 17,625
Other 16,273
Guatemala 14,150
Peru 8,156
Ecuador 6,267
India 4,701
El Salvador 4,575
Brazil 3,467
China 2,769
Turkey 1,840
Cuba 941
Nicaragua 463
Haiti 387
Russia 162
Romania 122

**June 2023**
Mexico 33,967 
Venezuela 12,549 
Other 11,485 
Honduras 10,657 
Guatemala 9,547 
Ecuador 4,704 
Colombia 3,915 
India 2,513 
Peru 2,478 
Brazil 2,225 
China 2,122 
El Salvador 2,042 
Turkey 493 
Cuba 351 
Russia 186 
Nicaragua 180 
Romania 93 
Haiti 29

At the same time, it shows a 27 percent increase in the number of migrants who were able to approach the land-border ports of entry. The 45,026 people processed at ports of entry in June 2023 was a record. There is a lot of green (increases) in this chart of tables:

**All Port of Entry Migrant Encounters at the U.S.-Mexico Border**

Includes only those encountered at ports of entry.
Shaded countries’ citizens may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42, or deported there under the 2023 asylum rule.


**April 2023**
Mexico 7,421 
Haiti 7,041 
Venezuela 4,905 
Russia 2,319 
Other 2,083 
Cuba 1,286 
Honduras 1,109 
Brazil 571 
Colombia 330 
El Salvador 288 
Guatemala 273 
Ecuador 199 
Nicaragua 134 
Peru 68 
China 23 
Ukraine 13 
Romania 9 
Canada 6 

**May 2023**
Mexico 11,793 
Haiti 4,788 
Venezuela 4,679 
Honduras 3,226 
Other 3,204 
Russia 2,811 
Cuba 1,864 
El Salvador 775 
Guatemala 667 
Colombia 506 
Brazil 349 
Nicaragua 255 
Ecuador 205 
Peru 109 
China 24 
Ukraine 21 
Turkey 19 
Romania 10 

**June 2023**
Mexico 15,309 
Venezuela 7,906 
Haiti 7,332 
Honduras 4,434 
Cuba 2,330 
Other 2,144 
Russia 1,242 
El Salvador 1,143 
Guatemala 814 
Colombia 790 
Brazil 736 
Ecuador 399 
Nicaragua 238 
Peru 145 
China 25 
Ukraine 15 
India 9 
Turkey 8

The number of nationalities whose citizens go to the ports of entry more than 20 percent of the time increased from 4 in April to 9 in June.

**Percentage of Migrants Encountered at Ports of Entry at U.S.-Mexico Border**

Shaded countries’ citizens may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42, or deported there under the 2023 asylum rule.

**April 2023**
Haiti 97%
Russia 88%
Cuba 80%
Nicaragua 26%
Brazil 16%
Venezuela 14%
Other 13%
Mexico 11%
Honduras 8%
El Salvador 6%
Romania 4%
Ecuador 3%
Guatemala 2%
Colombia 2%
Peru 1%
China 1%
India 0%
Turkey 0%


**May 2023**
Russia 95%
Haiti 93%
Cuba 66%
Nicaragua 36%
Mexico 21%
Other 16%
Honduras 15%
El Salvador 14%
Venezuela 14%
Brazil 9%
Romania 8%
Guatemala 5%
Ecuador 3%
Colombia 3%
Peru 1%
Turkey 1%
China 1%
India 0%


**June 2023**
Haiti 100%
Russia 87%
Cuba 87%
Nicaragua 57%
Venezuela 39%
El Salvador 36%
Mexico 31%
Honduras 29%
Brazil 25%
Colombia 17%
Other 16%
Guatemala 8%
Ecuador 8%
Peru 6%
Romania 2%
Turkey 2%
China 1%
India 0%

This is positive. The “CBP One” app that migrants must now use to secure asylum appointments at ports of entry continues to have flaws, but with 1,450 appointments per day now available, wait times in Mexican border cities—while still too long—have decreased.

It is much more humane to process asylum seekers and other migrants at the ports of entry, instead of requiring them to cross rivers or climb walls to stand on U.S. soil and turn themselves in to Border Patrol. I encourage CBP to continue increasing appointments until protection-seeking migrants no longer have an incentive to take the great risk of crossing the border on riverbanks and deserts.

As that happens, Border Patrol can mostly be cut out of the asylum processing picture, a very welcome outcome.

And even if the Biden administration’s new rule banning asylum for many migrants who cross “improperly” survives court challenges, greater access to the ports of entry will make such crossings less attractive to protection-seeking migrants anyway.

The shifts in June are a step toward that.

Finally, here is a combination of the first two tables, combining migrants who arrived at, and between, the ports of entry in April, May, and June. Overall, migration declined 30 percent from May to June.

**All CBP Migrant Encounters at the U.S.-Mexico Border**

Includes those encountered at, and between, ports of entry.
Shaded countries’ citizens may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42, or deported there under the 2023 asylum rule

**April 2023**
Mexico 67,087
Venezuela 34,636
Colombia 17,843
Other 15,860
Guatemala 14,582
Honduras 13,222
Peru 8,446
India 8,013
Haiti 7,276
Ecuador 6,396
El Salvador 4,679
Brazil 3,469
China 3,205
Russia 2,640
Turkey 2,292
Cuba 1,609
Nicaragua 506
Romania 206

**May 2023**
Mexico 55,407
Venezuela 32,734
Honduras 21,039
Other 19,477
Colombia 18,131
Guatemala 14,817
Peru 8,265
Ecuador 6,472
El Salvador 5,350
Haiti 5,175
India 4,705
Brazil 3,816
Russia 2,973
Cuba 2,805
China 2,793
Turkey 1,859
Nicaragua 718
Romania 132


**June 2023**
Mexico 49,276
Venezuela 20,455
Honduras 15,091
Other 13,629
Guatemala 10,361
Haiti 7,361
Ecuador 5,103
Colombia 4,705
El Salvador 3,185
Brazil 2,961
Cuba 2,681
Peru 2,623
India 2,522
China 2,147
Russia 1,428
Turkey 501
Nicaragua 418
Romania 95

Less migration? Or stranded migrants?

This talking point about a “95% drop in border migrant encounters from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” is problematic.

Why? Let’s examine encounters along the migration route, from north to south.

Here’s where the 95% comes from.

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered Between U.S. Ports of Entry

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Between Ports of Entry (Border Patrol)	47270	34596	54042	55910	57280	40470	50069	56209	78256	71656	75658	84192	11909	2052	3811

US Border Patrol’s apprehensions of these 4 countries’ migrants really did drop steeply from December—after Mexico agreed to accept Title 42 expulsions of these nationalities, and once a “humanitarian parole” option opened up for some of them.

But there’s no 95% drop anywhere else along the migration route, where people fleeing those countries have become stranded.

Since December, Mexico’s encounters with these 4 countries’ migrants are only down 42%.

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Mexico

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	7549	6601	10448	11221	8551	8071	11308	21545	22910	31047	23450	21124	12480	9859	12327

Since December, Honduras’s encounters with Cuban, Haitian, and Venezuelan migrants are up 10%.

(Nicaraguan citizens don’t need passports to be in Honduras, and thus don’t end up in Honduras’s count of “irregular” or “undocumented” migrants.)

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Honduras

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	1589	2253	7571	10703	10757	12726	10297	18504	17332	21173	15833	11666	9310	9183	12879

Since December, in Panama’s Darién Gap, migration from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela is up 250% (though down 57% from a high in October, before Mexico started accepting expulsions of Venezuelan migrants).

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Panama’s Darién Gap

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	2595	2534	2723	4113	11408	12800	18885	26142	41531	45781	6723	8340	14542	14946	29186

The upshot: migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela may be down sharply at the US-Mexico border, due to aggressive Title 42 expulsions.

But the expulsions have absolutely not deterred these nations’ citizens from migrating. They’re still fleeing—but they’re stranded.

The cost of “success”

Chart: Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Encountered At and Between Ports of Entry

	Oct-19	Nov-19	Dec-19	Jan-20	Feb-20	Mar-20	Apr-20	May-20	Jun-20	Jul-20	Aug-20	Sep-20	Oct-20	Nov-20	Dec-20	Jan-21	Feb-21	Mar-21	Apr-21	May-21	Jun-21	Jul-21	Aug-21	Sep-21	Oct-21	Nov-21	Dec-21	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
At Ports of Entry (CBP Office of Field Operations)	2098	1404	771	402	352	262	6	20	31	39	35	36	31	25	45	36	69	264	258	291	475	777	1083	98	44	124	116	166	207	352	1340	2999	4170	5129	6512	5088	6867	6729	7154	10173	12328	10698
Between Ports of Entry (Border Patrol)	1051	1138	1832	1204	1498	1137	276	603	1180	1829	2376	3443	2640	2233	3105	4410	6225	13016	13402	17103	23519	27885	27262	40464	29431	41518	55112	47270	34596	54042	55910	57280	40470	50069	56209	78256	71656	75658	84192	11909	2052	3811

Biden administration officials might view this chart as evidence of “policy success.”

Combining Title 42 expulsions, “CBP One” appointments, and humanitarian parole brought a 95% decrease in Border Patrol’s encounters with Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants since December, and a 50% increase in the much smaller number of those able to come to ports of entry.

But a lot of the people who were in those tall green columns—many of whom may have valid asylum claims—remain in Mexican border cities. Stranded. More are coming, but since they’re not crossing the border from Mexico, this chart doesn’t show them.

Forty of these stranded people died in a fire a month ago in Ciudad Juárez. Now, in the past couple of days, 2,000 living in miserable tents in Matamoros have come under attack. The Associated Press reports:

About two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a migrant camp across the border from Texas this week, witnesses said Friday, a sign of the extreme risk that comes with being stuck in Mexico as the Biden administration increasingly relies on that country to host people fleeing poverty and violence. 

The fires were set Wednesday and Thursday at the sprawling camp of about 2,000 people, most of them from Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico, in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas. An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline.

The entire Western Hemisphere is in a moment of mass migration, as the Migration Policy Institute reminded us in a feature published last week. “The number of migrants living in the region nearly doubled from 8.3 million in 2010 to 16.3 million in 2022… Notably, much of the migration has been between countries within the region,” not to the United States.

A region-wide crisis demands that the Biden administration further expand its ability to process and fairly adjudicate this increased number of protection claims. At a time of historically low unemployment, it also requires creating more legal pathways to migration.

Right now, that can mean adjusting policies that are already in place.

  • The number of “CBP One” appointments for asylum applicants at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry, which reached 764 per day in March, needs to increase substantially to keep up with the demand in Mexican border cities, where each day’s allotment of appointments runs out in minutes.
  • The administration’s “humanitarian parole” program must loosen its passport and U.S.-based sponsor requirements, which exclude people lacking connections, who are often the most vulnerable.

Without changes like these, Mexican border cities are going to continue filling up. We’ll see more tragedies, more attacks, more bridge closures as large groups of people gather after being misled by misinformation.

The people in this chart’s tall green columns aren’t going anywhere. Most have nowhere else to go. The pressure is going to keep building.

March migration at the U.S.-Mexico border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data this evening about its “encounters” (regular apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions) with undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border during March. Here are a few graphics illustrating key trends.

CBP and Border Patrol encountered migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border 23% more often in March than in February. Much of the variation was seasonal: March is usually busier due to milder weather.

The nationalities that increased by more than 2,500 migrant encounters from February to March were Mexico, Colombia, India, Venezuela, and Peru.

U.S. border authorities used the zombie Title 42 authority 87,661 times in March to expel migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s the most expulsions in a single month since last June.

Here’s the nationalities of migrants taken into CBP and Border Patrol custody at the US-Mexico border in each of the past 3 months.

Notable:

– Colombia is now the number 2 nationality (which may loom a bit over President Gustavo Petro’s visit to Washington this week).
– Peru is now 5th.
– March saw by far the largest number of migrants from India in a single month.
– Just because Title 42 gets applied to a nationality doesn’t mean it drops in the ranking.

These tables show which countries’ migrants most often come to the U.S.-Mexico border’s ports of entry (official border crossings).

This may give a sense of which nationalities’ migrants are having at least some success with the “CBP One” app’s asylum appointments feature. It’s surprisingly consistent.

One more: March saw CBP grant the largest number yet of appointments for migrants to seek asylum at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry (official border crossings).

It averaged 764 appointments per day, virtually all of them made via the “CBP One” smartphone app.

Judging from widespread reports of frustration with the app in Mexican border cities, 764 spots a day is still just a fraction of protection needs. (These stats are from a court filing from yesterday, not CBP’s March data release.)
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