Illegal Border Crossings Soar to Record High, New Data Shows - The New York Times

Migrants were encountered 1.7 million times in the last 12 months, the highest number of illegal crossings recorded since at least 1960.

A record 1.7 million migrants from around the world, many of them fleeing pandemic-ravaged countries, were encountered trying to enter the United States illegally in the last 12 months, capping a year of chaos at the southern border, which has emerged as one of the most formidable challenges for the Biden administration.

Over the last 12 months, the Border Patrol has carried out more than one million expulsions of migrants back to Mexico or to the migrants’ home countries.

Agents used the public health rule to expel migrants they encountered 61 percent of the time and to expel families 26 percent of the time.

Even as the Biden administration continues to use the Trump-era public health rule to deter migration, people from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — have crossed without authorization in high numbers for several consecutive months.

Before the public health rule was put in place at the beginning of the pandemic, migrants caught entering the country without authorization could be criminally prosecuted and detained for months.

Biden took office, the administration was aware of an uptick in the number of migrants heading north, but it appeared to be caught flat-footed by the large jump in the numbers that followed and by how long the trend has lasted.

The data released on Friday also shows a sharp increase in the number of Haitian migrants who crossed last month — more than 17,000, or 38 percent of the total number of Haitians who were caught crossing illegally over the past 12 months.

Of the Haitians who crossed in September, 36 percent were turned away under the public health rule, including more than 2,500 who had arrived in family units.

In all, the Biden administration used the rule to turn away 54 percent of all the migrants caught crossing illegally last month

To comply with a recent court order, the Biden administration has said it plans next month to resume a Trump-era policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” which mandates that asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their immigration court hearings in the United States, pending agreement from the Mexican government