BORDER/DHS/IMMIGRATION/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The pace of arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border dropped in June, according to a preliminary government estimate — potentially signaling that the Trump administration’s controversial ‘zero tolerance’ policy discouraged migrants from traveling north. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is projected to arrest roughly 37,000 people at the border in June, based on arrest data from June 1-16, a DHS official told POLITICO. If that trend held after June 16, it would represent roughly an 8 percent falloff from May — a decline that might demonstrate that zero-tolerance prosecutions of undocumented migrants who crossed the southern border, and the family separations that resulted, created a disincentive for Central Americans to attempt unauthorized entry to the U.S…It remains to be seen whether the decline continued after June 20, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring that families be detained together. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters Monday [6-25-18] that Border Patrol agents were no longer referring migrant families to the Justice Department for prosecution, effectively suspending zero tolerance.”
-Ted Hesson, “Border arrests projected to drop in June,” Politico, June 26, 2018 6:03 pm