Amid Crisis, Ports Process 34% Fewer Central Americans

For the first time ever, two countries —Guatemala and Honduras—have surpassed Mexico as the top nations of origin for immigrants apprehended crossing illegally into the United States. Along with El Salvador, immigrants from three Northern Triangle countries of Central America have made up three quarters of Border Patrol apprehensions this year.Nearly all Central Americans cross the border and seek out a Border Patrol agent to turn themselves in to. The primary reason that they do this, rather than come to a port to apply, is that Customs and Border Protectionhas capped the number of undocumented immigrants it will process at ports. This means that officers willphysically block their entry to the port and force them back into Mexico.The current cap —which has no basis in the asylum laws—is about 10,000 per month, roughly half the level in October 2016. It has remained at about this level for over a year. But that’s just theoverall number. For Central Americans from the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, the numbers of undocumented arrivals processed at ports plummeted in Fiscal Year 2019 —they’ve fallen 34% from a monthly average of 2,920 to 1,938 (Figure 1).Figure 1: Monthly average number of undocumented Central Americans!function(e,t,s,i){var n= " InfogramEmbeds " ,o=e.getElementsByTagName( " script " )[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)? " http: " : " https: " ;if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs