It’s Back to the 1990s Along the Southern U.S. Border
As jobs go unfilled in America, single adults are driving an increase in illegal crossings. Some are trying multiple times.
Apprehended at the border.
Photographer: Loren Elliott/AFP via Getty Images
Things aren’t exactly settling down along the U.S. border with Mexico, with the U.S. Border Patrol reporting 178,416 apprehensions in the Southwest in June, its highest monthly total since early 2000.
Emergency rules adopted early in the Covid-19 pandemic that allow for the immediate expulsion of most unauthorized border crossers and people who arrive at the border seeking asylum have resulted in “a larger-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection says. The number of “unique individuals” the Border Patrol and the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO), which manages border crossings and ports of entry, has encountered so far this fiscal year is actually slightly lower than at this point in 2019. But 2019 was a pretty big year for illegal immigration too.