BORDER/DHS/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Migrant shelters along the southern border are filling up again. Immigration lawyers in the region say their caseloads are spiking. Across the Southwest, border officers are stopping more than 1,000 people a day.
Just months after border apprehensions hit a 17-year low, which administration officials proudly celebrated as a ‘Trump effect,’ the number of migrants trying to enter the United States has been surging, surpassing 40,000 along the Southwest border last month, more than double the springtime numbers, according to new data from the Homeland Security Department… In interviews, volunteers and lawyers along the border say that migrants and smugglers have stopped lying low, deciding that trying to get a foothold in a well-off and safe country was no riskier than in the past…
In releasing the data, the administration acknowledged that it had lost ground in its effort to stem immigration. But it also seized on the statistics to make the case that Congress should overhaul immigration laws to deter more people from coming…
The numbers of apprehensions are an indication of border activity, but they do not count those who slip through undetected. Though the recent increase makes clear that the flow of migrants has resumed, the numbers have not approached the crisis levels of 2014, when they reached nearly 70,000 in a single month, many of them children traveling alone. Homeland Security officials noted that the 2017 apprehensions still represented a 40 percent decrease from the year before.”
-Caitlin Dickerson, “‘Trump Effect’ Wears Off as Migrants Resume Their Northward Push,” The New York Times online, Jan. 10, 2018