Number of Mexican Border Patrol Arrests Erupted in September; Here's Why

By Tiziana Celine First Posted: Oct 15, 2020 01:58 AM EDT

Migrant arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border hit their maximum number in September.

According to new U.S. Data from Customs and Border Control, border agents bizarrely removed nearly all migrants to Mexico within fewer than two hours of their detention. Arrests, however, are still significantly smaller than last year.

In September, authorities apprehended 54,771 persons seeking to reach the southwestern frontier, including 3,756 unaccompanied minors and 3,808 persons who crossed with families.

After August, arrests in the U.S.-Mexican Border have risen by almost 16 percent, extending a five-month-long boom since arrests fell to just 16,182 in April.

Nearly 90 percent of the arrestees last month were almost instantly transferred back to the Mexican side of the border and then freed. That is part of a contentious March strategy that the Trump administration says is meant to avoid the spread of COVID-19, while critics have blasted the procedure as unjust and possibly harmful.

The Washington Post estimated Wednesday that about 37 percent of recent arrestees attempted to cross the border more than once. A 30-point rise from last year that some analysts claim is attributed to CBP's strategy to deport citizens automatically.

In the 2020 fiscal year, which ended in September, CBP made 400,651 total arrests. Arrests fell precipitously in the fiscal year 2019 from 851,508. An overall development that CBP officials say is attributed to the Trump administration's stringent policies.

Cross-border wars

Negotiations over the sharing of water at the U.S.-Mexican Border has been challenging. However, increasing temperatures and long droughts have rendered more valuable than ever the mutual rivers along the frontier, intensifying both nations' stakes.

The takeover of the dam is a stark illustration of how much citizens can protect climate change-threatened livelihoods and the type of violence that will become more frequent with increasingly severe weather.

"These tensions, these tendencies, are already there, and they're just made so much worse by climate change," said Christopher Scott, a professor of water resources policy at the University of Arizona. "They are in a fight for their lives, because no water, no agriculture; no agriculture, no rural communities."

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, who has consistently bent on the immigration requests of President Donald Trump, has promised that his government will make good on its water commitments to the United States.

He sent hundreds of National Guard officers to defend the dams in Chihuahua, and his government briefly suspended bank accounts in the area where many of the demonstrators reside. However, farmers felt betrayed by the government's betrayal.

Mr. Velderrain, 42, told The New York Times that he never saw himself as the sort of guy who might have led hundreds over the hill to overtake a squad of soldiers defending automatic weapons caches.

Trump's stance

Trump's immigration policy has been reportedly marked by stringent, sweeping, and brutal steps aimed first and foremost to deter individuals from attempting to cross the border.

His administration regularly split children and parents who crossed the border together for many months in 2018.

His notorious "Remain in Mexico" policy forces most asylum claimants to reside in Mexico for months while pending their court hearings, sometimes in unsafe border cities, and COVID-19 offered the administration a justification to start expelling almost instantly most adults and children.

These measures have generated consistent uproar and numerous legal challenges. But officials argue that they are successful in deterring migration, with CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan labeling Trump's Remain in Mexico policy a "gamechanger."

Now, as economic conditions deteriorate, officials warn attempts to cross the border might increase again.

"After the pandemic ceases, we will face the same kind of influx of illegal migration that we confronted in 2019," Morgan said at a press conference Wednesday. "In fact, we're anticipating it's likely to be worse due to the deteriorating and worsening economic conditions... that was exasperated by COVID-19."