Roughly four migrants have been apprehended at the US border with Mexico every minute since Kamala Harris became vice-president, figures show.
The Border Patrol has recorded 7.1 million migrant encounters at the southwestern border since February 2020, or 3.8 encounters every minute.
This is almost quadruple the number under Donald Trump, the former president, who saw just 2.1 million migrants stopped at the border over the same period during his time in office.
Ms Harris was tasked with tackling the root causes of illegal migration from central America in March 2021, and has been dubbed the “border tsar” by critics who claim she has failed to get a grip on the issue.
The Border Patrol is responsible for monitoring crossings in between official US border points. Once apprehensions at legal crossings are included, the figure jumps to 4.4 encounters a minute.
Average monthly crossings in 2021, 2022 and 2023 are now the highest recorded in more than 50 years. On average, 164,207 migrants crossed the border every month during these days.
However, border encounters have declined significantly this year, with crossings in the first eight months of 2024 29 per cent lower than in 2023.
In August, 58,038 crossings were made – the lowest monthly figure since September 2020, when Trump was in the White House.
The figures appear to vindicate steps that Joe Biden, the US president, has recently taken to clamp down on asylum claims.
In June, Mr Biden enacted an executive order that bars migrants from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border when illegal crossings exceed 2,500 per day for seven days. The border only reopens once that number declines to 1,500.
Voters rank immigration as their second-highest concern in this election and give Trump a 16-point advantage over Ms Harris for his stance on the issue, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released on Friday.
Texas’ Rio Grande and Del Rio border areas have dealt with the largest number of migrants, with some 38 per cent using the crossing since 2021.
However, Tucson, Arizona comes in a close third, with over 1.3 million people crossing since Ms Harris became vice-president.
It is a key issue in the state, one of a handful that will likely decide who wins the White House. In September, Ms Harris signalled she would take a tougher stance on asylum claims on a visit to the border town of Douglas.
Border Force data shows that 4.4 million migrants, or 59 per cent of the total, come from just four countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
However, in recent years there has been a surge in other nationalities, with Venezuelans increasing from 47,752 in the 2021 fiscal year, to two million last year.
Similarly, in 2021, just 323 Chinese people made their way into the United States via the southwestern border. Last year, this surpassed 36,500 as they became the eighth largest nationality to use the border route.
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Publish date : 2024-10-16 22:10:00
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