In 2024, appropriations to FEMA's Shelter and Services Program, which prevents migrants from being dumped on U.S. streets upon release, totaled less than 2 percent of appropriations to FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund.
Donald Trump and others are pushing a completely false story that response to Hurricane Helene has been hobbled because the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has had funds “stolen” to help shelter migrants recently released from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody at the border.
As many have pointed out, there is exactly zero truth to this. But even if that happened, it wouldn’t have amounted to much. In 2024, appropriations to FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, which prevents migrants from being dumped on U.S. streets upon release, totaled less than 2 percent of appropriations to FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund.
Border Patrol agents recovered the remains of 175 migrants in the agency’s El Paso Sector (far west Texas plus New Mexico), a shocking increase. An alarming thing about these deaths is that—unlike in Arizona, where people must walk for days—most of these deaths are within a few miles of the borderline, not far from services and help.
The number comes from USA Today reporter Lauren Villagrán, who reported on the mental health toll that finding so many bodies is taking on agents.
Weekly data from the three busiest Border Patrol sectors show migrant apprehensions dropping sharply for two or three weeks after June 5, when the Biden administration imposed a strict new asylum restriction rule. After that, the reductions have stopped and apprehensions have plateaued.
Weekly data from the three busiest Border Patrol sectors show migrant apprehensions dropping sharply for two or three weeks after June 5, when the Biden administration imposed a strict new asylum restriction rule.
After that, the reductions have stopped and apprehensions have plateaued through July and August.
The numbers show that "Operation Lone Star" hasn't caused declines in migration to Texas much greater than declines elsewhere. We should be relieved that cruelty hasn't paid dividends.
Here are Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants, by U.S. border state, since the record-setting month of December 2023.
Since December, unauthorized migration has declined by two thirds. Since January—after Mexico started cracking down hard on migrants crossing its territory—migration declined by one third. From May to June, after the Biden administration issued a rule severely limiting asylum access between ports of entry, migration dropped by 29 percent. (This effect is likely to be short-term, but may keep numbers down through Election Day—even as it sends many would-be asylum seekers back to danger.)
Texas’s hardline governor, Greg Abbott (R), likes to claim that his state government’s “Operation Lone Star,” a $10 billion-plus series of security-force deployments, imprisonments, and wall-building, is responsible for the drop in migrants coming to Texas. Abbott even alleges that Texas has pushed migrants to other states.
But did Texas see the largest drop in migration?
Since December, the answer is “yes, though not dramatically more.” Migrant apprehensions in Texas declined by 82 percent from December to June. But in Arizona, where Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) has not implemented any “Operation Lone Star”-like policies, apprehensions dropped by 70 percent. Both states, with their very different approaches, experienced declines greater than the border-wide average.
If one takes January—after Mexico’s crackdown began—as the baseline date, Arizona in fact declined more sharply than Texas. (52 percent to 40 percent.)
From May to June, Texas dropped 36 percent and Arizona 33 percent, a near tie.
From this, It’s really hard to conclude that Greg Abbott’s policies made a big difference. Arizona experienced similar declines without the hardline policies. The 2024 migration decline is a border-wide trend, not a Texas phenomenon.
We should be relieved that cruelty hasn’t paid any dividends.
CBP hasn't increased the allotment of appointments—currently about 1,450 per day—in a year. Asylum seekers now routinely spend months in Mexico seeking, then awaiting, appointments.
Here, by month and by country, are appointments that CBP has granted to asylum seekers, using its “CBP One” mobile phone app, to approach U.S.-Mexico land border ports of entry.
The app’s use for this purpose began in January 2023, and today it is very hard to request asylum at the border without an app-scheduled appointment.
It is especially hard since June 5, when the Biden administration imposed a rule banning asylum for most people who cross the border between ports of entry, even though the law specifies that people have the right to ask for asylum on U.S. soil regardless of how they crossed.
Though it is the only pathway for most, appointments are scarce. CBP hasn’t increased the allotment of appointments—currently about 1,450 per day—in a year. Asylum seekers now routinely spend months in Mexico seeking, then awaiting, appointments.
For monthly US Border Patrol migrant encounters since October 1999,
May 2024 (latest month available) was number 59.
Number 1 was December 2023 (249,739).
Number 296 was April 2017.
May 2024 (latest month available) was number 59.
Number 1 was December 2023 (249,739).
Number 296 was April 2017 (11,127, migrants and smugglers were in a temporary “wait and see” mode after Donald Trump’s inauguration).
During the first five months of the 2024 fiscal year (October 2023-February 2024), people from Asia, Africa, or Europe were one out of every eight migrants whom Border Patrol apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
That’s never come close to happening before. Non-Americas countries are non-blue in this chart:
After increasing at the beginning of 2024, migration through the Darién Gap has declined somewhat, settling at about 1,000 people per day.
Last month (May), 69 percent of migrants passing through the treacherous jungle region were Venezuelan. In fact, Venezuelans now make up 50 percent of all migrants who’ve passed through the Darién Gap since 2010, when Panama started keeping and publishing records.
Between January 2022 and May 2024, 588,872 citizens of Venezuela journeyed through the Darién. Venezuela had about 30 million people in the mid-2010s when the nation’s exodus began—so fully 2 percent of Venezuela’s population has made the jungle journey since the pandemic’s end.
Colombia for the first time was the Darién Gap’s second-place nationality in May. Haiti, Ecuador, and China are dropping. India and Peru are up.
Four months into 2024, migration at the U.S.-Mexico border remains at some of the lowest levels of the Biden administration. And the phenomenon is not limited to Greg Abbott's Texas.
Of Joe Biden’s 39 full months in office, 2024 so far has seen the months with the third, fourth, eighth, and ninth fewest migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. April was fourth-fewest.
This was unexpected, since it immediately followed some of the Biden administration’s heaviest months for migration, including the record-setting December 2023. The drop appears to owe to a sustainedcrackdown carried out by Mexico’s government, with migration agents, national guardsmen, and other security forces blocking migrants’ northward progress.
The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott (R), has been claiming that his state government’s border crackdown reduced migration there and pushed it to states further west. That’s not what the data show.
Since record-setting December, and also since migration dropped in January, Arizona—not Texas—has seen the sharpest percentage drop in migration. Arizona has a Democratic governor, and its state government is not carrying out a severe deterrent policy like Abbott’s $10 billion-plus “Operation Lone Star.” Yet Arizona’s migration reduction is similar. So Texas doesn’t get the credit.
We can zoom in further to look at what has happened to migration in each of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors.
Viewed this way, one of Texas’s five sectors did see the sharpest drop in migration: Del Rio, in mid-Texas, fell 86 percent from December to April; 39 percent from January to April. It is the only Texas sector to have decreased more sharply than the border-wide average.
But Tucson, Arizona—Border Patrol’s busiest sector between July 2023 and March 2024—fell almost as steeply as Del Rio (61% since December and 38% since January).
And after a December-January drop, all other Texas sectors are increasing.
Del Rio’s migration decline was led by super-sharp drops in arrivals from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, three nationalities (along with Haiti) whose citizens the Mexican government allows the Biden administration to deport into Mexico under its May 2023 post-Title 42 “asylum ban” rule.
Deportation into Mexico without allowing a chance to seek asylum is almost certainly illegal: a federal judge already struck this part of the rule down (it remains in place pending appeal). It’s possible that this practice—more than Texas’s concertina wire, buoys, and soldiers—may have affected the choices these nationalities’ migrants made in Del Rio since January.
Border-wide between January and April, for every Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan migrant who crossed the border irregularly (43,040), more than five instead arrived via legal channels: either the “CBP One” app (about 120,000) to make appointments at ports of entry, or the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program (about108,000) for these nationalities.
In Tucson, no nationalities declined as steeply as did Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans in Del Rio. But the drop has happened across the board, with only modest increases in apprehensions of Colombians and Peruvians.
From what we know of the month of May so far, migration along the border could be declining even further. Twitter reports from the San Diego and Tucson Border Patrol sector chiefs have showed both regions declining over the past two weeks. The El Paso municipal government’s “migrant crisis” dashboard is also showing flat, even slightly reduced, numbers of encounters there.
I keep a little webpage that generates tables of data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, using CBP’s regularly updated dataset.
For weeks, I’ve wanted to have the ability to sort the tables by clicking on their column headers. It seemed like a big job, though, especially figuring out how to keep the columns’ totals at the bottom, not included in the sort.
This evening, though, I thought to ask ChatGPT—and it gave me exactly what I wanted, with only a couple of dozen lines of code. Here’s what the tables can do now:
The whole process took less than 20 minutes: two queries and me copy-pasting the code into the page. It works flawlessly, which is very cool, and perhaps a bit creepy.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration and drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border through February. Within minutes, I added the migration data to my online tool that helps you search it
At the end of the day Friday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration and drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border through February. Within minutes, I added the migration data to my online tool that helps you search it, cbpdata.adamisacson.com. I’m glad this is so easy to do now.
Visit the “cpbdata” tool to view migration data by country, by demographic category, by geographic area, and to see years going back to 2020. I’ll be updating our collection of infographics over the next several days.
Sector chiefs’ weekly Twitter updates point to a mid-March drop in migration in Tucson, Arizona and San Diego, California, the two Border Patrol U.S.-Mexico border sectors that have been encountering the most migrants so far this year.
This is not the usual trend. March—and spring in general—is usually a time of steadily increasing migration, until temperatures get too high. In recent years, though, this has become less predictable, as policy changes, internet-driven rumors, and smuggling patterns have had more effect on the numbers of arriving people.
A new tool that lets you search CBP's migration data.
I’ve been posting a bit less this week because I’ve moved my site and domain to a new service provider. (You may have noticed that this page loaded a few milliseconds faster? Probably not.)
I’m now using a virtual server that can host not just this site, but other little projects as sub-domains of adamisacson.com.
One of those little projects is live now: cbpdata.adamisacson.com. It’s a tool that lets you search Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) migration data since 2020.
Every month, CBP updates and publishes a dataset of its encounters with migrants since fiscal year 2020 (October 2019). We may get February’s data any moment now.
But that data is basically a table that right now has 58,866 rows. This site makes it usable.
(CBP has a “dashboard” that shows this data since 2021, and unlike mine, it includes encounters beyond the U.S.-Mexico border, including the Canada border and airports. But it doesn’t let you, for instance, just see how many people came from every country—you have to select each country one by one—and it’s really hard to get data out of it.)
I think the page is self-explanatory. If you visit it, do nothing, and click “Show the Data,” you’ll get a table showing how many migrants CBP encountered—both Border Patrol and ports of entry combined—by country for each year since 2020.
Hover your mouse over any number in the table, and a pop-up will show you the percentage of the total (so in the picture, 27% of 2024’s migrants so far have come from Mexico).
Click the “select table” button, and the entire thing is selected, letting you copy-and-paste it into a spreadsheet or anywhere else.
I encourage you to play around with the options on the main page letting you refine your search. Checking the various boxes lets you see, for instance, “How many family members and accompanied/unaccompanied children from Cuba and Haiti arrived in Texas’s five Border Patrol sectors and two CBP field offices, by month since 2023, listed by whether they came to ports of entry or to areas between them.” Just to give an idea of all the variables.
I hope you find it useful. I’m using it constantly. When CBP releases its February data, I’ll be able to update this within about 10 minutes of obtaining it.
tl;dr: This piece doesn’t make a human rights argument about asylum access, though it does acknowledge cruelty and human cost. Instead, the argument here is cold, analytical, and practical: the past 10 years’ numbers and experience show that trying to deter protection-seeking migrants just doesn’t work. All it does is push their numbers down temporarily.
As President Biden and candidate Trump head to the Texas-Mexico border, immigration opponents are blaming the President’s border policies for the horrific, tragic February 22 murder of a nursing student in Georgia. But the case of the alleged killer, a 26-year-old Venezuelan man named José Ibarra, shows the futility of trying to put asylum out of reach at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Title 42 was a “nuclear option” for denying asylum—yet it didn’t deter people from coming
Since 1980, U.S. law has clearly stated that any non-citizens on U.S. soil have the right to apply for asylum, regardless of how they arrived, if they fear for their lives or freedom upon return to their country for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Once here, they are entitled to due process, and even Donald Trump’s administration had to honor that, hundreds of thousands of times (though they constantly sought to cut corners).
That is presumably what José Ibarra sought to do when he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso in September 2022. But in fact, Ibarra came to the U.S.-Mexico border at a time when the U.S. government was going to extreme lengths to make asylum unavailable.
Between March 2020 and May 2023, the “Title 42” pandemic policy—begun by Donald Trump and continued by Joe Biden—used public health as a pretext for carrying out the toughest restriction on asylum seekers since 1980. Title 42 empowered U.S. border officials to expel—not even to properly process—all undocumented migrants they encountered.
If they said “I fear for my life if you expel me,” in most cases migrants still didn’t get hearings: they were expelled from the United States as quickly as possible. If they were Salvadoran, Guatemalan, or Honduran—and later Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan—Mexico agreed to take many of them back across the land border.
In September 2022, when Ibarra turned himself in to Border Patrol, Title 42 was in full effect. But “expelled as quickly as possible” was often complicated.
In September 2022 alone, 33,804 Venezuelans—fleeing authoritarianism, corrupt misrule, violence, social collapse, and cratering living standards—arrived at the border.
That month was an especially busy time for Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector (one of the agency’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors, comprised of far west Texas and New Mexico). Agents there encountered 49,030 migrants over those 30 days, 20,169 of them from Venezuela, including José Ibarra.
(Let’s recall, too, that the vast majority of those people were seeking to step on U.S. soil and turn themselves in to Border Patrol. They weren’t trying to get away. The presence of a border wall near the riverbank is irrelevant: they just want to set foot on the riverbank.)
Of those 20,169 Venezuelan migrants in El Paso that month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used Title 42 to expel… 2.
Why so few? Because U.S. authorities had nowhere to “put” expelled citizens of Venezuela and many other countries. At the time, Mexico was accepting Title 42 expulsions of three non-Mexican nationalities, but not Venezuelans. (That came later, in October 2023, bringing a temporary drop in Venezuelan migration. But despite the threat of expulsion, by the last full month of Title 42—April 2023—the number of Venezuelan migrants had recovered to 34,633, at the time a record.)
In 2022—and again, now—Venezuela’s government, which has no diplomatic relations with the United States, was refusing deportations or expulsions by air. Those flights are very expensive anyway for a country thousands of miles away.
At that pandemic moment, but still today, the sheer number of arrivals at the border—often more than 200,000 per month, at a moment of more worldwide migration than at any time since World War II—often makes detaining asylum seekers impossible, for lack of space and budget. So then, and still now, U.S. authorities release many into the U.S. interior with a date to appear before ICE or immigration courts in their destination cities. (The vast majority show up for those appointments.)
This was the reality even during the draconian Title 42 period, when U.S. authorities did expel people—many of them asylum seekers—2,912,294 times. But even as Mexico took back land-border expulsions of many Mexican and Central American people with urgent protection needs, U.S. officials, unable to expel, released José Ibarra and many others into the United States.
Why cracking down on asylum doesn’t work
Let’s repeat: this is what was happening when it was U.S. government policy to expel as many asylum seekers as it could, as quickly as it could. Washington tried a massive crackdown on asylum, and it failed to deter people. This is what happened to Border Patrol’s migrant encounters during the Title 42 period:
Right now, though, curbing the ability to ask for asylum at the border is in vogue again. Language in a “border deal” negotiated by Senate Republicans and Democrats—defeated in early February because Republicans didn’t think it went far enough—would have switched on a Title 42-like expulsion authority whenever daily migrant encounters averaged more than 4,000 or 5,000 per day.
CBP released data showing that Border Patrol's apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped by 50 percent from December to January, the sharpest drop for which I have records.
Late this afternoon—right around the time House Republicans were impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas—CBP released data showing that Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped by 50 percent from December to January.
I’ve got monthly Border Patrol data going back to October 1999, and 50 percent is the steepest one-month drop of all of those 24+ years. Steeper than the first full month of the pandemic (April 2020). Steeper than the first full month after Title 42 ended (June 2023).
It’s peculiar that migration dropped so much over two months during which no policy changes were announced. I’ll repeat the most probable reasons, as laid out in WOLA’s January 26 Border Update.
According to a fewaccounts, numerous people sought to cross the U.S. border before the end of 2023 because they were misled by rumors indicating that the border would “close,” or that the CBP One app would no longer work, by year’s end.
Seasonal patterns are a factor: migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border havefallen from December to January every year since 2014 (except for a 6 percent increase in January 2021). Rainy conditions in the Darién Gap corridor straddling Colombia and Panama, and a tendency not to migrate during Christmas, may also explain some of the reduction.
Also, while there were no policy changes, there was one under heavy discussion: the Senate “border deal” that died a quick death on February 7. The spread of vague, confusing news about impending asylum restrictions could have cooled migration more than usual last month.
Anyway, here are two charts.
Here is all migration at the border, combining people apprehended by Border Patrol and people who, mainly with appointments, showed up at land ports of entry. This is what it looks like when the heaviest month for migration on record at the U.S.-Mexico border is followed by the third-lightest month of the Biden administration’s 36 months.
And here is just Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants between ports of entry. Look at Venezuela: apprehensions of Venezuelan citizens fell by 91 percent from December to January. This does seem to point to everyone feeling like they needed to cross to the United States before 2023 ended, leaving few on the Mexican side after the new year.
At some point last month, the 500,000th Venezuelan migrant of the 2020s crossed the Darién Gap. 61 percent of everyone who has migrated through this region in this decade has been a citizen of Venezuela.
The latest data from Panama show that 36,001 people migrated through the treacherous Darién Gap region in January. That’s an increase from December, reversing four months of declines. But it is still the fourth-smallest monthly total of the last twelve months.
At some point last month, the 500,000th Venezuelan migrant of the 2020s crossed the Darién Gap. 61 percent of everyone who has migrated through this region in this decade has been a citizen of Venezuela.
Actually, to be precise: the 500,000th Venezuelan migrant since 2022 crossed the Darién Gap last month. Out of 503,805 Venezuelan migrants between January 2000 and January 2024, 500,917 came in the last 25 months. There were about 30 million people living in Venezuela: so 1 out of every 60 has walked this nightmare jungle route. In 25 months.
The 30,000th Chinese citizen of the 2020s crossed the Darién last month. A year ago (after January 2023), the decade’s total migration from China was just 2,998 people.
Data posted to Twitter by Border Patrol sector chiefs show migration increasing again during the second half of January 2024.
After dipping sharply after the holidays, the number of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border appears to be increasing again.
That, at least, is the trend that we can discern from the weekly updates that the Border Patrol chiefs in Tucson and San Diego, two of the busiest of the agency’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors, have been posting to their Twitter accounts.
Nine charts explaining the state of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of 2023.
Late on Friday the 26th, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) updated its dataset of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border through December. Here are some highlights, expressed as nine charts.
Migrants apprehended by Border Patrol (in border areas between ports of entry)
Between ports of entry, CBP’s Border Patrol component apprehended 249,785 people last month. That is probably a monthly record. It is at least the largest amount measured since October 1999, the earliest month for which Border Patrol makes monthly data available.
Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions jumped 31 percent from November (191,112). Increased migration from Venezuela, which more than doubled, accounted for 41 percent of the border-wide month-to-month increase.
December also saw big increases in migration between ports of entry from the other three nationalities (in addition to Venezuela) whose citizens the Biden administration allows to apply for its humanitarian parole program: Cuba (+192 percent from November to December), Haiti (+1,266 percent), and Nicaragua (+91 percent). This may mean that the humanitarian parole program is saturated by demand and insufficient supply.
It was the first month since May 2022 that more than 1,000 Haitian citizens crossed between the ports of entry and ended up in Border Patrol custody.
At the official border crossings, CBP’s Office of Field Operations encountered 52,249 migrants. This is a record—though not by a wide margin, as CBP tightly controls who gets to step on U.S. soil and approach its ports of entry. Since July 2023, port-of-entry encounters have been within a narrow band: between 50,837 and 52,249. Of December’s encounters, CBP’s release indicates, 45,770 (88 percent, 1,476 per day) had made appointments using the CBP One smartphone app.
Combine the Border Patrol and port-of-entry totals, and U.S. border authorities encountered 302,034 people at the U.S.-Mexico border last month. That is a record.
Border Patrol apprehensions of unaccompanied children, or parents and children
46 percent of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol between ports of entry in December were members of family units (41 percent) or minors who arrived unaccompanied (5 percent). That is the 24th-highest child-and-family share of Border Patrol’s last 147 months, and probably ever: high, but nowhere near a record.
The overall number of children and families (114,192), however, was the second-most ever, nearly matching the record set in September 2023.
CBP encounters with family units (parents with children)
Combining Border Patrol apprehensions with port-of-entry encounters, December 2023 saw the second-highest-ever monthly total of family unit-member encounters: 123,512, just short of September 2023’s record total of 123,815.
Family-unit encounters rose 19 percent from November to December. Citizens of Venezuela arriving as families accounted for 38 percent of the month-to-month increase, and citizens of Mexico accounted for 28 percent.
Combining Border Patrol apprehensions with port-of-entry encounters, December 2023 saw 12,467 children arrive at the border unaccompanied. That was the 17th-highest monthly total ever, and a 5 percent increase over November 2023.
The nationalities that contributed most to the increase in unaccompanied child arrivals were Haiti, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Arrivals from El Salvador and Honduras both declined.
When the pandemic-area Title 42 expulsions policy was in effect, Border Patrol apprehensions of single adults skyrocketed. The reasoning was that (a) a large portion of adult migrants were seeking to evade apprehension, not turn themselves in to seek asylum; and (b) when Title 42 caused them to be expelled to Mexico after a very brief time in Border Patrol custody, many attempted to migrate again, leading to many more repeat apprehensions.
That was borne out in the months after Title 42 ended, when single adult apprehensions dropped sharply. However, even without a quick expulsions policy in place, Border Patrol’s apprehensions of single adult migrants between the ports of entry jumped 41 percent from November to December, from 96,478 to 135,593. This was the 8th largest monthly total of single adult migrant apprehensions of the past 147 months.
Combining Border Patrol apprehensions with port-of-entry encounters, December 2023 saw 164,907 migrants arrive as single adults, a 32 percent increase over November (125,332). Single adult migrants from Venezuela and Guatemala accounted for nearly two-thirds of the increase, while citizens of Mexico declined slightly.
In Honduras, which closely monitors migrant transit, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti were the top three nationalities in December. Asia and Africa are heavily represented, with only 8 of December's top 15 nationalities from the Americas. Migration through Honduras and the Darién Gap has more than doubled since 2022, with a growing number arriving by air in Nicaragua and seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As we noted in a June report, Honduras keeps a reasonably accurate count of migrants transiting its territory, because it requires people to register with the government in order to have permission to board a bus. A minority travel with smugglers and don’t register, but most do.
Honduras also reports the nationalities of “irregular” migrants in something close to real time, so here’s what in-transit migration looked like through December.
The top 15 nationalities transiting Honduras during December were:
Venezuela 13,803 (32% of 42,637 total)
Cuba 8,997 (21%)
Guinea 3,558 (8%)
Ecuador 3,324 (8%)
Haiti 3,001 (7%)
China 2,121 (5%)
India 1,472 (3%)
Colombia 1,461 (3%)
Senegal 706 (2%)
Chile (children of Haitians) 456 (1%)
Afghanistan 325 (1%)
Vietnam 325 (1%)
Peru 305 (1%)
Brazil 249 (some children of Haitians) (1%)
Angola 222 (1%)
The top 15 nationalities during all of 2023 were:
Venezuela 228,889 (42% of 545,364 total)
Cuba 85,969 (16%)
Haiti 82,249 (15%)
Ecuador 46,086 (8%)
Colombia 13,136 (2%)
Guinea 12,902 (2%)
China 12,184 (2%)
Senegal 8,964 (2%)
Mauritania 5,816 (1%)
Uzbekistan 5,153 (1%)
India 4,366 (1%)
Chile (children of Haitians) 3,004 (1%)
Egypt 2,845 (1%)
Afghanistan 2,729 (1%)
Angola 2,640 (0.5%)
A few things are notable about this data:
Nationalities from Asia and Africa are heavily represented. The Americas made up just 8 of December’s top 15 countries, and 6 of 2023’s top 15 countries. The situation in the Darién Gap is similar: only 7 of the top 15 nationalities counted by Panamanian authorities during the first 11 months of 2023 were Latin American or Caribbean.
The total is similar to that measured in the Darién Gap. Panama’s Public Security Ministry reported on Monday that a stunning 520,085 migrants passed through the Darien Gap in 2023. Honduras reported a similarly stunning 545,364. Both are more than double 2022’s totals.
Honduras’s total is greater than the Darién Gap, even though some migrants don’t register, because it includes many migrants who arrived by air in Nicaragua. Honduras’s neighbor to the south lies north of the Darién Gap, making it unnecessary to take that treacherous route, and does not require visas of visitors from most of the world. A growing number of people from Cuba, Haiti, and other continents have been taking circuitous commercial air routes, or often charter planes like one halted in France two weeks ago, to arrive in Managua and then travel overland to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Much of the increase in migration through Honduras reflects the growth of that route—especially those from African countries, whose numbers declined in the Darién Gap because Nicaragua presented a safer, shorter alternative. (Darién Gap travelers from outside the Americas often fly first to Ecuador or Brazil.)
Border Patrol has set a new record for migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in a single month, exceeding 225,000 in the first 27 days of December. Data shared by Mexico's president show a big increase in Venezuelan arrivals despite 11 deportation flights to Caracas since October.
Border Patrol shares monthly data about its apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border since October 1999. As this chart shows, during that time, the number of migrant apprehensions in a single month has never exceeded 225,000. (224,370 in May 2022, 222,018 in December 2022, 220,063 in March 2000.)
That threshold has now been passed. CBS News’s Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported yesterday, “U.S. Border Patrol agents took into custody more than 225,000 migrants who crossed the southern border—in between official crossings—during the first 27 days of December, according to the preliminary Department of Homeland Security [DHS] statistics.”
(This number does not include approximately 50,000 more migrants who come each month to ports of entry—official border crossings—usually with appointments.)
Montoya-Galvez shared Border Patrol’s daily averages, showing modest decline in migrant arrivals over the past week:
The current spike in migration peaked before Christmas, during the week starting on Dec. 14 and ending on Dec. 20, when Border Patrol averaged 9,773 daily apprehensions, according to the data. On several days that week, the agency processed more than 10,000 migrants in 24 hours.
Unlawful crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have decreased this week, but remain at historically high levels. On Wednesday, Border Patrol processed 7,759 migrants, the statistics show.
In his morning press conference yesterday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shared this slide of data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP, Border Patrol’s parent agency), depicting CBP’s monthly migrant encounters through the first 17 days of December. This slide appears to combine Border Patrol apprehensions with CBP’s port-of-entry encounters, so the numbers are a bit higher.
Combining encounters with migrants at the ports of entry and between them, the chart shows a daily average of 9,787 people per day over December 1-17, increasing to 10,187 per day over December 1-21.
The chart shows a sharp increase in daily arrivals of Venezuelan citizens, whose numbers dropped in October and November after the Biden administration’s October 5 announcement that it was resuming deportation flights to Caracas.
There have since been 11 such flights, DHS reported on December 27. It appears that despite the (not huge) risk of being on one of these roughly one-per-week flights, Venezuelan asylum seekers are again coming in greater numbers.
The Mexican government just released new data showing that it recorded 97,969 migrant encounters during November 2023, a new monthly record
The Mexican government just released new data showing that it recorded 97,969 “events of people in irregular migratory situation” during November 2023. That’s 5 percent more than October, and sets a new record for the most migrant encounters that Mexico has ever recorded in a month:
Migrants came from 111 countries. Of nationalities with more than 1,000 migrant encounters, those that increased the most from October to November were Mauritania (119%), the Dominican Republic (92%), and Honduras (65%). Those that declined the most from October to November were Cuba (-52%), Senegal (-28%), and Guinea (-11%). Venezuela, the number-one nationality, declined 8 percent.
Even as Mexico measured an increase in migration in November, two countries to the south, Panama and Honduras, reported double-digit percentage decreases.
On December 18, the US-Mexico border saw a record high of 14,509 migrant encounters, according to leaked CBP data. This is despite declining migration through Panama, Honduras, and Mexico.
According to leaked CBP data, U.S. authorities encountered 14,509 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border yesterday (December 18). That’s probably about 13,000 Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry (official border crossings) and about 1,500 people reporting to the ports of entry, nearly always with appointments made using the “CBP One” app.
That’s almost certainly the largest number of migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border in any day since at least 2000.
Aaron at the American Immigration Council says this increase, which seems to have begun in November, “is driven partly by rumors that the border will close soon and the CBP One app will be shut down.” That may explain it. A funding crisis at Mexico’s migration agency (National Migration Institute, INM) could also be a factor.
This is really unusual, though, because migration data further south along the U.S.-bound migration route would lead one to expect the numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border to be declining. Panama, Honduras, and Mexico have been reporting fewer people coming after record-breaking levels in late summer and early fall.
Here’s Panama: a 24 percent decline in migration through the Darién Gap from October to November, and a 50 percent decline in migration from September to November. So, fewer people departing the South American continent.
Here’s Honduras: down 41 percent from October to November. So, fewer people coming from South America and through the increasingly used aerial entry point in Nicaragua.
Why are the numbers up so much at the U.S. border when they’re down everywhere else along the route? The answer probably has to do with:
A jump in migration from citizens of Mexico and Central American, and/or
Crossings of Venezuelans and others who had arrived in Mexico more than 1-2 months ago, and perhaps are now giving up on waiting for CBP One.
Also, If recent Decembers are a guide, the U.S. border numbers could be on the verge of dropping. The first halves of December 2021 and December 2022 saw very heavy migration, capping off growth that accelerated all fall (as did the fall of 2023). Numbers dropped during the second halves of those Decembers, as the holidays approached.
Panama has just posted statistics detailing migration through the treacherous Darién Gap region through November. They show the number of migrants passing through the Darién dropping for the third straight month, to less than half of August and September levels. November was 24 percent lighter than October.
Among major nationalities, the sharpest one-month declines were from Venezuela (-35%), Peru (-39%), Vietnam (-31%), and Benin (-38%). Migration from China increased 39 percent.
Venezuelan migrants may be delaying plans until they see what happens with the Biden administration’s announced resumption of deportation flights to Caracas. Colder weather and the end-of-year holidays may be part of the reason for the across-the-board decline.
Still, the barely governed jungle region finished the year’s first 11 months with nearly half a million migrants (495,459), which has never come close to happening before. A couple of weeks later, the count now stands at more than 506,000.
So far this year, 22 percent of Darién Gap migrants have been minors. (UNICEF has estimated that half of minors transiting the Darién are under five years old.) 52 percent have been men, 26 percent women, 12 percent boys, and 10 percent girls.
The U.S. government’s 2023 fiscal year ended on September 30. Here’s a comparison of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, by migrants’ nationalities, over the past three fiscal years.
Fresh numbers from Panama show a 35 percent drop, from September to October, in the number of people migrating through the Darién Gap. The main cause was a 41 percent decline in the number of citizens of Venezuela (blue in the chart) who traveled through the treacherous jungle region.
2023 is still—by far—a record-breaking year for Darién Gap migration, though. 458,228 people migrated through the region during the first 10 months of the year, making it certain that the year-end total will surpass 500,000. 294,598 of this year’s migrants (64 percent, blue in the chart) have been Venezuelan.
Data from the United States and Honduras also show sharp drops in migration from Venezuela. The cause appears to be U.S. and Venezuelan governments’ October 5 announcement that they would be renewing deportation flights to Caracas. Though these flights are proving to be relatively infrequent so far, the mere possibility of being sent all the way back to Venezuela seems to have led many Venezuelan citizens considering migration to “wait and see” and delay their plans.
Honduras is the country that reports in-transit migration in the most current manner. Looking at weekly migration through Honduras shows a possible recovery in Venezuelan migration (blue) during the first full week of November. However, a single week’s data don’t necessarily point to a trend. Here is migration of citizens of Venezuela during each week between September 1 and November 9.
The chart also shows citizens of Haiti (green), whose numbers rose then fell during the same period. The recent drop owes to the Haitian government, at strong U.S. suggestion, banning charter flights to Nicaragua at the end of October.
New CBP data for the U.S.-Mexico border is out through October. Combining migrants who came to ports of entry with migrants whom Border Patrol apprehended between the ports of entry, migration fell from 269,735 people in September to 240,988 in October (-11 percent).
Nearly all of the net reduction is citizens of Venezuela, whose numbers fell -39 percent (66,584 in September to 40,863 in October). The Biden administration’s October 5 announcement of resumed deportation flights to Venezuela probably explains the reduction. News of the resumption may have led some would-be migrants to pause their plans.
This drop will probably be short-lived, unless the Biden administration pursues a massive, costly, cruel, and politically absurd blitz of frequent aerial deportation flights to Caracas. (We see no signs of that happening yet.) As I wrote a couple of days ago, it is reasonable to expect Venezuelan migration to recover, as conditions in the country remain dire and as Venezuelans considering migration realize that the probability of aerial deportation is slim.
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