The U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua have contributed to the highest number of recorded illegal crossings in a fiscal year.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, authorities stopped migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico 2.76 million times, a figure far exceeding last year’s 1.73 million stops.
There were 227,527 migrants stopped in September alone, making it the third-highest month during Joe Biden‘s presidency. Migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua account for nearly one-third of stops, as figures show 77,302 migrants from these countries were stopped during September.
The Biden administration is attributing this rapid surge of migrants to the growing political and economic instability within these countries, adding that strained relations hinder the U.S. ability to deport migrants back.
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus.
The recording of repeat encounters is also to blame for the inflated figures, says the Biden administration. Twenty-two percent of migrants taken into custody in August had been arrested in the previous 12 months, figures show.
Repeat encounters can in some part be blamed on Title 42, a Trump-era emergency public health policy that, in response to COVID-19, allows authorities to hastily expel some migrants directly back to Mexico.
In May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked an attempt from the Biden administration to lift Title 42, claiming that its reversal would cause “irreparable harm” to southern states’ funding for health care, law enforcement, and other services for migrants.
The Biden administration has not been stagnant, as recent policy initiatives announced earlier this month have dramatically decreased the number of Venezuelan migrants attempting to enter the country.
“The number of Venezuelans arriving at the southern border decreased sharply nearly every day since we launched additional joint actions with Mexico to reduce irregular migration and create a more fair, orderly, and safe process for people fleeing the humanitarian and economic crisis in their country,” said Magnus in an October statement. “Over the past week, the number of Venezuelans attempting to enter the country fell more than 80 percent compared to the week prior to the launch of the joint enforcement actions.”
Since the Biden administration announced the new policies subjecting more Venezuelan migrants to expulsion and opening a narrow, but legal, pathway for thousands to temporarily stay in the country, illegal crossings have decreased from about 1,200 Venezuelans a day to around 150.
Migrants’ journey to the U.S. is often riddled with dangerous uncertainty.
The number of migrants who have died attempting to cross into the U.S. is also at an all-time high. In June, 53 migrants in Texas died from suffocating heat after two smugglers left them in a tractor-trailer with no cooling system.
