Immigration: Is the US-Mexico border seeing a surge in migrants?

President Joe Biden’s immigration policies are being heavily criticized by Republicans, as large numbers of undocumented migrants cross the US-Mexico border. Former President Donald Trump says migrants are coming over the border “as this country has never seen”. So what are the numbers? The number of migrants intercepted at the border had been steadily rising since April 2020, but since President Biden took charge in January there has been a pointy increase. In May, the foremost recent month with published data, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded its highest monthly total in additional than 20 years of just over 180,000 migrants, mostly single adults. The head of the bureau within the US, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in March: “This isn’t new. we’ve experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014, and before then further.” During the Trump administration, migrant encounters hit a monthly high of over 144,000 in May 2019. There has also been a rise in the number of children crossing the border since President Biden took office. During the Trump administration, the 2019 yr (running from October 2018 to September 2019) saw over 800,000 migrants apprehended at the border – the foremost since 2007. But 2021 twelve-month has already passed the 2019 total, although it still has four months to run. There were years within the primary 2000s when over 1,000,000 migrants were intercepted crossing the US-Mexico border, with a peak of over 1.6 million in 2000. What about drugs crossing the border? Mr. Trump also claimed that drug cartels were “back in business”, saying more drugs were coming over the border since he left office. Drug seizures at US-Mexico border CBP records the load of medication seized at the border and thus the amount captured there has increased slightly since President Biden entered office. However, it remains well below the peaks seen under Mr. Trump. The overwhelming majority of seizures are of marijuana, with large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine also being found. The first five months of 2021 have seen fewer drugs seized (by weight) coming over the border than the primary five months of 2020.