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The migrants are gathered behind a fence at an improvised detention center in El Paso at the end of March. (Sergio Flores for the Washington Post)
The number of border workers arrested in the United States In April, US border officials announced Wednesday that their spending reached 100,000 people for the second time in a row, compounding the crisis that derailed President Trump's immigration program and thwarted his countless attempts to fix it.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested 109,144 migrants along the border with Mexico last month, an increase of 6% from March. The monthly arrests have reached their highest level since 2007. Unauthorized border crossings have more than doubled The number of Guatemalan and Honduran families that continue to flow north in record numbers is expected to handle more than one million people per year. year, with the hope that they will be quickly treated and released.
"Our apprehension figures are out of the picture," Carla Provost, chief of the Border Patrol, said Wednesday afternoon in a testimony before senators in Washington. "We can not solve this crisis by moving more resources. It's like holding a bucket under a faucet. It does not matter how many buckets we have if we can not cut the flow. "
"My biggest concern is that we will not be able to have any more consequences and we will lose control of the border," Provost said.
[Trump wants ‘toughness’ to deter migration, but physical measures keep failing]
President Trump has moved from closing the southern border to imposing new tariffs in Mexico unless the Mexican authorities do more to stop the flow of migrants to the United States. But who will be the most affected? (Luis Velarde / The Washington Post)
Trump treated the monthly publication of border control statistics as a performance indicator for his administration's immigration policies. The steady pace of bad news has left him furious and his administration has struggled to find solutions. Trump's fury contributed to the dismissal of Kirstjen Nielsen as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security last month as part of a wider reshuffle within the agency. Trump promised to go in a "harder" direction.
For Trump, tenacity includes the deployment of barbed wire razors, thousands of US soldiers, plans to build hundreds of kilometers of gates and threats of total border closure. But the physical measures have little discouraged Central American Americans fleeing misery, rampant violence and crop failures and see their loved ones and neighbors carry out their journey to the United States.
Border Patrol officers are looking for border workers near Palmview, Texas, last month. (Loren Elliott / Reuters)
Yet evidence of overloading the US immigration system continues to manifest itself.
DHS officials said for the first time this week that the agency was running out of space to imprison single adult migrants, who arrived in April at the highest level in the past five years. A DHS official warned against the total destruction of the border if single adults crossing illegally could no longer be detained or deported.
Border patrol agents arrested cross-border commuters in Mission, Texas last month. (Loren Elliott / Reuters)
DHS officials have already declared a "break point" for US border agents and infrastructure, with court rulings and limited detention space forcing them to release the vast majority of family members and relatives. migrant children in the interior of the United States. Border authorities consider adult single migrants as the last demographic group they can deter by "applying consequences".
"If we were forced to release single adults, we are planning a draw or stream that we had never seen before in our history," said the DHS official.
May is traditionally one of the busiest months for illegal crossings, and officials say the number of migrants in detention has increased further in the last 10 days. CBP made 5,075 arrests on Saturday, the highest total of a day since the start of the climb in 2017, officials said.
[[[[The Trump administration asks asylum officers to adopt a more confrontational approach]
There was a relatively modest increase in the border ban last month – after a 35% jump between February and March – but US authorities are preparing to reach 150,000 people a month this summer if their deterrence efforts do not work.
Migrant families who cross the border seem to know that they have a relatively easy way to free in the United States and have confided in American agents, the first step in launching a process of applying for a fee. 39 asylum that protects them from expulsion fast. .
The proportion of these border workers who present themselves in large groups has created an additional burden for US agents. According to the latest statistics, the Border Patrol has grouped 135 large groups made up of at least 100 migrants over the past seven months, ten times more than in total in 2018. On April 30, a group of 421 adults and children crossed in the El Paso region, the largest group ever seen by CBP, officials said.
Last month, a boat carried officers from the border patrol on the Rio Grande, on the outskirts of Piedras Negras (Mexico). (Sergio Flores for the Washington Post)
According to officials, many migrants continue to head north from Guatemala and Honduras, countries in which a considerable number of residents are fleeing extreme poverty and domestic dangers.
"Guatemala and Honduras have seen more than 1% of their population migrate to the United States in the first seven months of this fiscal year," Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said in a statement. Nielsen, in a speech describing his border strategy. "A department in Guatemala, Huehuetenango, has seen almost 35,000 of its residents – nearly 3% of the population – migrate to the United States during this period."
He cited a study funded by Vanderbilt University, funded by the United States, that one in four Guatemalans is interested in emigration. Of those who want to emigrate, 85% said the United States is their favorite destination, McAleenan said.
"More than 4 million Guatemalans are planning to migrate to the United States," McAleenan said.
McAleenan is working with Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior advisor, on an immigration bill that will contain provisions to reform the legal immigration system as well as measures to deal with the current crisis. McAleenan said it was part of an "aggressive and comprehensive strategy" that would involve "working together" with Mexico and Central America to get results.
Trump has asked the state department to cut aid to Central American countries in response to the rising border. At other moments of dive, he lashed out at Mexican leaders, saying they were "doing nothing" to cope with the wave of migration that was spreading in their country.
[Court backlog of 850,000 cases undermines Trump immigration agenda]
The acting secretary of DHS said his four-pillar plan included legislative amendments aimed at "eliminating the most vulnerable migrants' magnet", as well as adding barriers, technologies and technologies. staff along the US-Mexico border.
The third and fourth pillars, he said, will require partnerships with Mexico, to enhance its anti-immigration capacity, and with the leaders of Central America, to tackle the "push factors" pushing migrants to leave.
Last week, the White House announced that it would ask Congress for additional funding of $ 4.5 billion to deal with the border crisis. The bulk of these funds – $ 2.8 billion – would cover the cost of housing for minor migrants who arrive without a parent or guardian. Last month, more than 8,800 "unaccompanied foreign children" crossed the border.
CBP officials have also set up overcrowded tent camps at military sites in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas to reduce the dangerous overcrowding of border guard cells.
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