For example, from 2018 to 2019, the number of migrant families crossing the border illegally jumped from 77,794 to 432,838, a 456% increase. The number of single adult migrant apprehensions increased 30%, from 198,492 to 258,375.
Last year, 621,311 families were apprehended after crossing the southern border.
In recent years, Mexican families driven from the country by drug cartels that control vast swaths of territory have been crossing the border into the United States in unprecedented numbers in search of safety.
In the first eight months of fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, Border Patrol apprehended nearly 150,000 Mexican migrant families who entered the U.S. illegally, up from 87,014 in 2023 and 17,040 in 2020.
“We have a huge number of Mexican families coming, and they're easy to deport,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, because they can be bussed back to their home countries.
She said the exemptions for family evictions under the new regulations, and for unaccompanied minors, will almost certainly lead to family separations as desperate parents decide to send their children alone, often leaving them with smugglers.
Last May, a 4-year-old child was dropped over the barrier separating San Diego from the Mexican city of Tijuana into the US. The child survived. Two years earlier, agents rescued two young sisters, ages 3 and 5, who were dropped on the US side of a wall in New Mexico.