The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released FY2016 data showing border apprehensions are at 40-year lows. Far fewer individuals are trying to cross our borders than at any time since the 1970s.
In October 2016, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced that apprehensions at the Southwest Border in FY2016 were 408,870 – roughly one-third of what they were 15 years ago.
In the early 2000s, apprehension figures were regularly well over a million annually.
From 2004 to 2013, Border Patrol apprehensions of individuals from non-Mexican countries averaged just 89,600 annually.
By contrast, in 2014, that number jumped to more than 257,000, a 186 percent increase.
In 2014, Central American apprehensions outnumbered Mexican apprehensions for the first time in U.S. history—and it happened again in 2016.
Mexicans are now a minority of the nationalities coming to our border.
The demographics of those apprehended have shifted dramatically in the last decade. Refugees fleeing extreme violence in Central America now make up a much larger piece of the much smaller apprehension pie.
The latest increase in arrivals from Central America is part of a dramatic shift in migration patterns to the United States that includes an overall decline in arrivals to the southern border and far fewer Mexican immigrants. Central American families and children continue to come to the U.S. border in high numbers. More of those apprehended are Central Americans, and more of them are refugees.
