Border Patrol Arrests of Families and Children Are Lower. While there is a distinct month-to-month seasonality in the number of families and unaccompanied children arrested by the Border Patrol, the number of adults apprehended with children so far during FY 2018 (23,162) is still 14.5 percent lower than the number of adults arrested with children during the same seven-month period in FY 2017 (27,080). The number of unaccompanied children arrested by the Border Patrol this year is also down as compared with the same period during FY 2017.

Most Persons Arrested Quickly Deported. Already 20,846 out of the 24,876 adults arrested in April without children had been quickly deported - either through expedited removal or reinstatement of removal. Many adults arriving with children also end up quickly deported. A total of 1,060 out of the 4,537 adults arrested with children during April 2018 also had been deported. A smaller number, only 851 out of the 5,144 children arrested during April as part of these family units, have been deported. Thus, several hundred parents appear to have been deported without their children in April alone

How Old Are Children Arrested by the Border Patrol? As of April 2018, over half (51.2%) of the children arrested with parents this fiscal year were only 7 years of age or younger. Nearly a quarter (22.9%) were three or younger.

Criminal Prosecutions. Family separations in April 2018 do not appear to have been driven by criminal prosecutions of parents. These case-by-case Border Patrol records indicate that only one adult member of a family unit was referred for criminal prosecution during all of April 2018.

These Border Patrol records cover the period from October 2014 through April 2018 and were obtained after a lengthy FOIA campaign by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. To read the full report go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/518/

Many more details for each Border Patrol sector along both the northern and southern borders are available through a free on-line web query tool accompanying this report at:

http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/cbparrest/

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TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl