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 Putting TRAC to Work |
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Policy and Public Interest Groups |
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October 1, 2018 |
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Crisis at the Border? Overall Numbers Down, but New Migrant Flows Are Testing the System
By Cristobal Ramon
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In 2018, the increase in family apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border from the previous year led the Trump administration to call for and adopt stricter enforcement policies to fight what they believe is a crisis at the border. A review of government apprehensions data provides a more nuanced picture: while overall Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 apprehensions do not support the administration’s claims that a mass influx of individuals are coming across the U.S.-Mexico border, apprehensions of families with asylum claims (e.g., individuals seeking protection in the United States from prosecution in their home country) have increased over the last three years, presenting new challenges for U.S. border officials accustomed to managing primarily adult economic immigration from Mexico and Central America.
These figures come from U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) through Freedom of Information Act requests. The data is current as of September 2018 and does not include figures for August and September 2017. Additional information on this data is available at http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/cbparrest/about_data.html.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2018
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