Border Crisis Deepens: More Than 144K Arrested Last Month

U.S. Customs and Border Protections on Wednesday released its numbers for May, and they are shocking. Border Patrol apprehended or turned away more than 144,000 people last month on the southwest border, including more than 100,000 families and children.

That exceeds by 32 percent the total for April, which had represented the highest number of monthly apprehensions since 2007. Over the past eight months, CBP has detained more than 680,000 illegal immigrants—or, as acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders put it, “more than the population of Miami.”

Far from historically low levels of illegal immigration, we’re on pace now to reach the record-high levels that were common in the early 2000s, when annual apprehensions often exceeded 1 million. Border Patrol officials told reporters Wednesday that if the levels remain the same for the last four months of the fiscal year, the agency will surpass apprehension totals since 2006. Arrests on the southwest border peaked at 1.6 million in 2000. In May of that year, there were 166,296 apprehensions.

Here’s what the CBP chart looks like now. The red line at the top is this fiscal year.

A chart from the Washington Post puts the latest figures in a broader context, comparing the May figures to monthly totals going back to 2000.
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