Washington—— A historic increase in migrants during Joe Biden's presidency has led to him coming under attack in his re-election campaign, with Donald Trump and fellow Republicans blaming Democrats for the surge in people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, after campaigning on promises to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants, President-elect Trump is preparing to take office on Monday amid a sharp drop in border crossings.
Here are five key facts about immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few years.
By the time Trump left office in January 2021, more than 1,000 people had been stopped at the southern border 78,000 times That month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Compared to this, approx. 96,000 stations last month. The highest monthly total during the Biden administration was nearly 302,000 in December 2023, and Trump’s highest total was just over May 2019 144,000.
The figures include asylum seekers arriving at land ports of entry waiting for an appointment to enter legally, as well as those caught crossing illegally elsewhere on the border. Data from November and December showed for the first time that more immigrants were processed through ports of entry than were apprehended after entering the United States illegally.
In June, the Biden administration began effectively blocking migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. These restrictions do not apply to people entering through official ports of entry or using other legal means.
For part of last year, San Diego became preferred destination Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in decades. The change reflects the fact that smuggling routes that have remained unchanged for years have begun to change every few months since 2021. This is partly due to the increase in global immigration to the United States after the epidemic.
The San Diego area had 10,117 border apprehensions in December, second only to Texas' Rio Grande Valley, but that was down 70% from the same time last year.
In the weeks leading up to Trump's inauguration, migrant arrivals across much of the border had barely budged. But Gloria Chavez, the chief Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley sector in South Texas, reported that she posts local arrest numbers on social media every week. 1,206 immigration sites the last weekend of December, and The previous weekend 1,276. This number is double that of recent weeks Fewer than 600 arrests.
"This is the first quantitative indicator of an increase in immigration since the U.S. election, raising expectations (so far unrealized) that many immigrants may flood into the United States before Election Day," Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy groupwrote in a recent newsletter.
The trend appears to be waning in the new year, Chavez reports 669 people arrested There were 699 arrests during the weekends ending January 5 and January 12.
Isaacson noted that in 2016, before Trump's first term began, asylum seekers poured into the United States. But border policy is different now, and the Biden administration's rules have prevented most illegal immigrants from qualifying for asylum.
"Their only hope is not to be arrested," he said. "Some people may be trying, and even if they succeed, they won't show up in the numbers."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnyk, a senior fellow at the left-leaning American Immigration Council, said tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico.
“Today, it is more difficult for immigrants to reach the border and seek asylum than at any time in modern American history,” he said. “Despite a significant increase in border infrastructure, the United States remains a safe place in the eyes of people around the world.”
The United States has historically attracted immigrants from its southern neighbors. While Mexicans still make up the largest share of those seeking entry, arrivals from other countries have surged over time. During Trump’s first term, people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador flocked to the U.S. border because of instability in their countries.
This all starts to change Around 2019. During Biden's presidency, more people began arriving from Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia. People also come from further afield - Afghanistan, Ukraine and China.
The San Diego area has what is considered the most cosmopolitan border, attracting people from all over the world.
Chinese immigrants seeking work and freedom from a repressive government began arriving in record numbers — rising from 949 arrests in fiscal 2022 to more than 37,000 last fiscal year. Republicans have seized on the growth, framing it as a national security issue.
Numbers began to decline last year after the Biden administration imposed asylum restrictions and Ecuador began requiring Chinese citizens to have visas to fly to Ecuador.
The government's efforts to detain immigration violators has fluctuated wildly in recent years. During Trump’s first term, the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached a record high, exceeding 55,000.
Courts ordered some immigration detention centers to reduce capacity as COVID-19 spreads in detention facilities and kills detainees. In February 2021, a month after Biden took office, detentions dropped to a low of about 13,000 people. (Adelanto ICE Detention Facility in East Los Angeles Still bound by coronavirus-era court orders That prevented new detainees, reducing the number at the nearly 2,000-bed facility to just two. )
As of Dec. 29, more than 39,000 people, most of whom had no criminal records, were being held in civil immigration detention facilities, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research group. The number was fairly stable last year, generally fluctuating between 35,000 and just under 40,000 since the end of 2023.
The numbers are widely expected to increase again after Trump takes office as he works to fulfill his promise of mass deportations.
Immigrants who are in deportation proceedings may appear before an immigration judge. With a historic influx of immigrants under the Biden administration, the immigration court backlog now exceeds 3.7 million pending cases, according to TRAC.
Biden inherits an already backlogged immigration court system with 1.3 million cases. When Trump took office in 2017, there were more than 542,000 cases pending.
In fiscal year 2024, immigration courts closed more than 900,000 cases, the most ever. New cases have fallen sharply as fewer migrants are processed at the border.
Los Angeles County has nearly 115,000 cases, the second-most cases behind Miami-Dade County. Experts say the backlog cannot be eliminated without funding for hundreds of immigration judges and support staff and systemic reforms.