{ "id": "R46012", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "number": "R46012", "active": true, "source": "EveryCRSReport.com", "versions": [ { "source": "EveryCRSReport.com", "id": 608319, "date": "2019-11-19", "retrieved": "2019-12-13T15:20:38.183784", "title": "Immigration: Recent Apprehension Trends at the U.S. Southwest Border", "summary": "Unauthorized migration across the U.S. Southwest border poses considerable challenges to federal agencies that apprehend and process unauthorized migrants (aliens) due to changing characteristics and motivations of migrants in the past few years. Unauthorized migration flows are reflected by the number of migrants apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s (DHS\u2019s) Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In FY2000, total annual apprehensions at the border were at an all-time high of 1.64 million, before gradually declining to 303,916 in FY2017, a 45-year low. Apprehensions then increased to 396,579 in FY2018 and 851,508 in FY2019, the highest level since FY2007.\nMore notably, the character of unauthorized migrants has changed during the past decade. Historically, unauthorized migrant flows involved predominantly single adult Mexicans, traveling without families, whose primary motivation was U.S. employment. As recently as FY2011, Mexican nationals made up 86% of all apprehensions, and relatively few requested asylum. In FY2019, however, \u201cNorthern Triangle\u201d migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras comprised 81% of all apprehensions that year. Economic migrants exclusively seeking employment no longer dominate the unauthorized migrant flow, which is now driven to a greater extent by asylum seekers and those escaping violence and domestic insecurity, or those with motivations involving a mixture of protection and economic opportunity.\nCBP classifies apprehended unauthorized migrants into single adults, family units (at least one parent/guardian and at least one child), and unaccompanied alien children (UAC). In 2012, single adults made up 90% of apprehended migrants at the Southwest border. In FY2019, however, persons in family units and UAC together accounted for 65% of all apprehended migrants that year. In FY2019, CBP apprehended a record 473,682 persons in family units, exceeding all apprehensions of family unit members from FY2012-FY2018 combined. Mothers headed almost half of all family units apprehended in FY2019. In addition, apprehended persons in family units shifted from mostly Mexican nationals (80%) in FY2012 to mostly Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran nationals (91%) in FY2019. Similar changes occurred in the origin countries of unaccompanied alien children, whose total apprehensions also reached a record (76,020) in FY2019.\nThe changing character of the migrant flow has led to logistical and resource challenges for federal agencies, particularly CBP. These include a general capacity shortfall in CBP holding facilities, the lack of appropriate facilities to detain families in Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, the reassignment of some CBP personnel who monitor the border to process and respond to migrants in holding facilities, and rapidly expanding immigration court backlogs that delay expeditious proceedings. The changing underlying motivations and border migration strategies of recent migrants also makes apprehension data less useful than in the past for measuring border enforcement. Because many unauthorized migrants now actively seek out U.S. Border Patrol agents in order to request asylum, increases or decreases in apprehension numbers may not reflect the effectiveness of border enforcement strategies.\nIn response, the Trump Administration has changed existing policies for apprehended migrants, including implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the \u201cremain in Mexico\u201d immigration policy, which allow DHS to return migrants seeking U.S. admission to the contiguous country from which they arrived on land, pending removal proceedings.\nOptions for Congress could include legislative responses to the series of policies that the Administration has developed to address the changing flow of migrants at the Southwest border. Some proposals may consider changes to the appropriations of agencies charged with processing unauthorized migrants to reshape the system from one that was designed to apprehend and return single unauthorized adults from Mexico with no claims for protection, to one that can more quickly adjudicate those seeking humanitarian protection. Other options may include greater supervision of unauthorized migrants who are released into the United States, and mandating the collection and publication of more-detailed and timely data from CBP to more completely assess the flow of unauthorized migrants, including those in the MPP program, and their impact on border enforcement and the immigration court system.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "active": true, "formats": [ { "format": "HTML", "encoding": "utf-8", "url": "https://www.crs.gov/Reports/R46012", "sha1": "fca073842160672ccbd741cfbe44ad11a85b10e0", "filename": "files/20191119_R46012_fca073842160672ccbd741cfbe44ad11a85b10e0.html", "images": { "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/4.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_85f34b189f33bc6708341d4fb42dcc0356af6c6a.png", "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/2.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_b2f72891ba0bacc405282ac2869de7408c3b7161.png", "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/5.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_5033d12be02b46730e486ffcd92ac79ff5869055.png", "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/1.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_efb88a62e878514409b93764af4fdaa279d2b4a8.png", "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/3.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_566b5082a5283f0662a1cc266a7603b207f66558.png", "/products/Getimages/?directory=R/html/R46012_files&id=/0.png": "files/20191119_R46012_images_4fe2ffcc456e82490b7d32ef3501246faeaedc34.png" } }, { "format": "PDF", "encoding": null, "url": "https://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/R46012", "sha1": "435bff96b5a1a0488fae52afdc050d91b96ce6c5", "filename": "files/20191119_R46012_435bff96b5a1a0488fae52afdc050d91b96ce6c5.pdf", "images": {} } ], "topics": [] } ], "topics": [ "Appropriations", "Immigration Policy" ] }