Since January there has been a big drop in the number of illegal border crossings along the country’s southern border. The Biden administration in January announced stricter immigration which helped lower the rates of immigration according to the administration’s latest announcement.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection released data on immigration during a time when the border issue has become a key point of conflict between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans have frequently attacked the Biden administration and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for not taking enough action in order to secure the border.
In February there were 128,877 encounters with migrants who were trying to cross the border. This number is similar to January’s number of 128,913 and is the lowest number of encounters since February 2021.
However, the number of encounters is not the only measure to measure crossings as there are some migrants who might be forced to repeatedly try and cross the border. The agency specifically noted that 25 percent of the encounters in February had been repeat encounters, which means that the same migrants had tried crossing before within the last 12 months.
In December by comparison the numbers were much higher with the U.S. officials stopping migrants 221,693 times from entering from between the ports across the southern border.
In early January the administration announced a new policy to help bring down the migration rates. The new policy would require Mexico to take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule which denies them asylum over concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
