U.S. border agents apprehended about 36 percent more illegal aliens in May than in April, but the figure is still significantly less than last year’s total for May and almost half what they were at the beginning of 2020.
Agents stopped more than 23,000 illegals, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported Friday, almost all of them between ports of entry.
And that increase notwithstanding, agents have apprehended substantially fewer illegals so far this year compared to 2019.
The increase might show that President Trump’s strict policy of immediate deportation is less discouraging than it was at the height of the Chinese coronvirus panic, or that the illegals don’t much care whether they contract the Asiatic pathogen by traveling in groups of people they don’t know.
Whatever the case, tightened security and immediate deportations at the border have apparently driven smugglers to a new route. CBP air and maritime agents intercepted two boats full of Mexicans on Wednesday, the agency reported earlier this week.
The Numbers
Single adults were by far the largest number of illegals caught jumping the border: 19,544 of the 21,475.
A little more than 1,900, the CBP reported, were unaccompanied “children” or “family units.”
May’s figures brought the number of border-jumping single adults caught since October 1, the beginning of fiscal 2020, to 166,847. Including children and “families,” the total is 228,818.
Illegals Caught Crossing the Border — Month / Year
• Unaccompanied Children — 959 / 19,735
• Family Units — 972 / 42,236
• Single Adults — 19,554 / 166,847
• Totals — 21,475 / 228,818
As with illegals caught sneaking across the border, the agency reported, single adults were the lion’s share of inadmissibles: 1,499 of the 1,643 for the month.
Single adults were 26,115 of the 47,183 illegals stopped at ports of entry during the year’s first eight months.
Inadmissibles — Month / Year
• Unaccompanied Alien Children — 42 / 2,280
• Family Units — 73 / 18,414
• Single Adults — 1,499 / 26,115
• Accompanied Minor Child — 29 / 374
Totals — 1,643 / 47,183
Totals for Both Categories — 23,118 / 276,001
Dramatic Drop
Bad as the 36.3 percent increase from April’s near 17,000 is, May’s figure isn’t even close to the tsunami of illegals who hit the border in May last year, 144,116. The decrease to 23,118 is 84 percent.
Numbers declined 62.8 percent from October through April. And the total for this year so far, 276,001, is 60 percent less compared to last year’s first eight months.
October — 60,781 / 45,157
November — 62,469 / 42,642
December — 60,794 / 40,573
January — 58,317 / 36,584
February — 76,545 / 36,689
March — 103,731 / 34,064
April — 109,415 / 16,789
May — 144,116 / 23,118
Totals — 676,168 / 276,001
Trump’s Order And The Pandemic
As The New American reported in May, the sharp decline in apprehensions in April was likely the result of the Chinese Virus pandemic and President Trump’s immediate deportation order in March.
Yet neither the virus nor the tough border policy has discouraged the most determined smugglers, whom agents have repeatedly stopped driving large vehicles packed with illegals.
And now, they’re trying to get into the country by sea, CBP reported.
Agents intercepted two boats packed with 35 illegals in the wee hours Wednesday morning.
They stopped the first, which carried 10 Mexican men, at about 1:30 a.m. It was an “open hull pleasure boat traveling without lights, just west of Coronado, with the hull of the boat spray-painted black,” the agency reported.
Sea-borne agents tracked the second craft, a 32-footer, for 6½ hours until they caught it just off the coast of San Diego. It was loaded with 25 Mexicans: 18 men, six women, and a 15-year-old boy.
The U.S. Coast Guard assisted with the second arrest.
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
