WASHINGTON – Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border are likely to approach the 1 million mark this fiscal year, a remarkable turnaround for a U.S. border security environment that just two years ago had witnessed the lowest levels of illegal immigration since 1971.
What was a major, if often unrecognized, enforcement success story has been replaced by a migration and humanitarian crisis that has overwhelmed border operations, strained an already overloaded immigration court system and resulted in unsafe, precarious conditions for migrants.
How did conditions at the border unravel? And what are the push factors in Central America and the pull factors in the United States that have led to rising migration flows now, when many of these factors were present earlier?
In From Control to Crisis: Changing Trends and Policies Reshaping U.S.-Mexico Border Enforcement, Migration Policy Institute (MPI) researchers draw on enforcement and other data from the United States, Mexico and Central America, as well as analysis of changing migration trends and policies to comprehensively tell this story.
An enforcement system designed for what was the main challenge at the border for decades—illegal immigration of Mexican adults—has not been repointed to address the rapidly changing flows of families and unaccompanied children from Central America, many seeking humanitarian protection, others wanting work or to reunite with relatives already in the United States. The change has been dramatic: In 2008, Mexicans comprised more than 90 percent of apprehensions. So far this fiscal year, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans represent 74 percent of apprehensions, with two-thirds composed of families or unaccompanied children.
“There is an urgent need to re-envision border enforcement given the characteristics of today’s mixed flows,” the MPI researchers write. “Migration from Central America, and indeed potentially from other parts of the hemisphere and regions of the world, constitute today’s major and longer-term challenge to U.S.-Mexico border security and border management.”
The sweeping range of actions the Trump administration has taken to date, from repeated efforts to narrow access to asylum, stationing of troops at the border, family separation, cutoff of aid to Central American countries and more do not represent the transformation necessary to achieve and assure lasting success at the border, the authors state. “While collectively this succession of punitive enforcement-oriented actions is unprecedented in scope, paradoxically it has made the situation at the border worse.”
The authors outline four critical elements that must be part of a smart, effective rethinking of border enforcement:
Read the report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/changing-trends-policies-reshaping-us-mexico-border-enforcement.
And join us August 12 for the launch of our Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, which aims to generate a big-picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future.
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The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels.