As U.S. expels migrants, they return, again and again, across Mexico border

A recent surge in arrests along the Mexico border has been partly driven by soaring numbers of migrants trying to enter the United States again and again, as emergency pandemic measures that rapidly “expel” most detainees have had the unintended consequence of allowing them to try repeat illegal crossings, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the unpublished statistics. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said last week that the agency recorded 40,746 detentions in July, up 24 percent from June and more than double the figure from April, when 17,086 were taken into custody. Since implementing the emergency measures, CBP officials have not publicly disclosed the Border Patrol “recidivism rate” — the percentage of those detentions that involves repeat crossers — but the two DHS officials said the figure now exceeds 30 percent. That is up from 7 percent last year. In late March, as the novel coronavirus spread, the Trump administration began allowing agents to quickly process migrants and bus them directly back to Mexico, instead of holding them in detention cells where infections could multiply. More than 90 percent of those arrested by CBP are now summarily “expelled” from the country under the emergency measures, including minors, asylum seekers and others normally afforded additional protections. Migration levels fell sharply in April after the measures were implemented, but crossings have jumped since then. U.S. officials expect the trend to continue as economic conditions deteriorate in Mexico and Central America because of the pandemic. The expulsion system affords migrants multiple attempts to be caught with little risk of detention or prosecution, and officials said they worry that the recidivism rate will grow...MORE