Immigration crisis: how are things at the US border after the lifting of many restrictions

After US President Joe Biden overturned many of the decrees of his predecessor, Donald Trump, immigrants flooded to the US border. How is the situation there now, said the publication CNN.

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Huge influx of immigrants

The US Border Patrol clashed with 32 large groups of migrants along the southern border amid a new wave of children arriving at the border alone.

According to data from customs and border services, the number of large groups of 100 or more people has increased. The data is for the fiscal year that starts in October, which means that some of the larger groups arrived during the Trump administration.

As a result, almost 100 immigrants were detained in February. This figure has increased for the tenth consecutive month.

Border Patrol officials have raised the alarm over an increase in the number of children and families of immigrants illegally crossing the US border. For weeks, the Biden administration has struggled to get the children out of border facilities within the legal timeframe.

Children are a unique problem for border patrols as, by law, they can only be held in temporary detention facilities for up to three days before being transferred to shelters. As the number of immigrants has skyrocketed in recent months, many children are being held for longer than three days due to a lack of shelter places. Pew Research.

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This month, the Biden administration announced it would restart an Obama-era program that allows some Central American children to apply to enter the United States from their home countries to deter them from traveling. The administration is reportedly trying to find a place for migrant children in unused schools or military facilities.

“No end in sight,” Rio Grande Patrol Chief Agent Brian Hastings tweeted. “Large groups continue to arrive.”

Convicted rapist among illegal immigrants

Among the illegal immigrants who crossed the US border, there was also a convicted rapist, writes FoxNews.

Border patrol agents detained him among a group of about 18 people in Andrade.

Andrade is a small town in southeastern California where the state meets Arizona and Mexico.

Border patrol agents checked the group's documents and found that one of them, identified as 54-year-old Aurelio Sandoval-Valdivia, was a Mexican citizen convicted of rape.

According to CBP, Sandoval-Valdivia had convictions for both willful child abuse and drunk driving. He was previously deported from the United States.

There are still fewer illegal aliens than under Trump

The number of groups still remains well below the 213 large groups faced in fiscal 2019 during the surge, mainly driven by families from Northern Triangle countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

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This is about half the number of large groups compared to the same period in 2019, when 70 large groups were detained.

At that time, the head of the Department of Homeland Security Kirsten Nielsen said that the ongoing border crisis "puts many minors and their families at extreme risk of exploitation by traffickers, smugglers, gangs and other nefarious individuals seeking to profit from them."

These large groups often include children and families, who usually surrender to patrols and do not try to avoid arrest.

But there are growing fears among experts that the level of the number of illegal immigrants may return to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Monthly detentions dropped to 16 in April 182, shortly after the COVID-2020 pandemic caused the de facto closure of the southwest border and slowed migration across much of the world.

But since then, concerns have grown every month and reached 96 in February.

The total number of arrests in February was much higher than the typical monthly rate in recent years, with the exception of a sharp increase in 2019 during the Trump administration.

The 45th President's administration has responded to increased border activity with a series of new restrictions designed to deter immigrants from traveling to the United States to seek asylum. These policy changes included the Stay in Mexico program, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their claims were processed.

President Joe Biden lifted some of Trump's immigration restrictions, including his stay in Mexico policy. This has prompted some Republicans to blame Biden's approach for the recent surge in immigration.

Experts pointed to other possible factors behind the growing number of migrants detained at the border, including the massive economic damage caused by the pandemic and natural disasters in Central America, the region of origin of many migrants heading to the United States.

The profile of the detainees is very different from the previous ones.

While the number of monthly detentions at the US-Mexican border is close to two years ago, according to the CBP, the profile of detainees is very different.

On the subject: Thousands of Children Cross US Border Ahead of Biden's Citizenship Reform for Illegal Immigrants

Mexican migrants are more of a concern today than in the recent past, while Central American immigrants make up a smaller proportion. About four in ten (42%) of those detained at the southwestern border in February were of Mexican descent, up from 13% in May 2019, the most recent monthly peak in detentions. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras accounted for 46% of arrests in February, up from 78% in May 2019.

The number and proportion of single adults apprehended at the border have also increased sharply. Single adults made up 71% of all apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, while people traveling in families and unaccompanied minors made up 20% and 10%, respectively. This is in stark contrast to May 2019, when people traveling in families made up 64% of the total, and single adults and unaccompanied minors made up 28% and 9% respectively.

While only about a third of all arrests in February were of people traveling with families or unaccompanied minors, the number has skyrocketed this year. Detentions of people traveling as families rose from 7 to 064, or 18%, between January and February, while detentions of unaccompanied minors rose from 945 to 168, or 5694%.

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