By Steve Neavling
A record number of migrants have been arrested along the Mexico border with more than 1.7 million detainments during the 2021 fiscal year, The Washington Post reports.
By comparison, the average number of migrants taken into custody in the fiscal years between 2012 and 2020 was 540,000.
In the first nine months of Biden’s administration, U.S. authorities have detained more than 1.3 million migrants, including 192,000 last month.
Republicans have blamed Biden’s laxer immigration policies on the surge.
During the 2021 fiscal year, more than 608,000 Mexican nationals were arrested, representing the largest source of illegal migration.
The second-largest source of illegal migration was outside Mexico and Central America, in a category called “other,” which includes Haitians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Cubans, Brazilians and migrants from dozens of other nations.
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador followed.
“Migration to the U.S.-Mexico border is now truly global,” Cris Ramón, an independent immigration consultant in Washington, said. “The implications for immigration policy require a far more comprehensive approach because it’s not enough to say you have to deter migration from Mexico or Central America. This has become a far more complex problem for the administration to deal with.”
