Surge of Migrants at U.S. Southern Border: Biden's Immigration Plan and What You Need to Know

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

May 12, 2021

WASHINGTON—The U.S. has been grappling with a surge of migrants from Mexico and Central America crossing the border illegally, and the Biden administration is on pace to preside over a 20-year high in illegal border crossings by the end of the federal budget year in September. The situation has created a political and policy challenge for the administration, which has struggled in particular to care for record numbers of unaccompanied children in its custody.

Here are questions and answers about why the migrants are coming, what happens once they arrive and what the administration is doing to attempt to slow the surge.

Who are the migrants crossing the border illegally?

The migrants are broadly grouped in three classes by U.S. immigration authorities: families, unaccompanied children and single adults. The families and unaccompanied children are primarily asylum seekers from Central America, many of whom say they are fleeing gang-related violence. The single adults are primarily men from Mexico seeking work in the U.S.

Border Patrol agents have made more than 381,000 arrests along the border during the fiscal year that began in October, about 82% of which were single adults. That is more than double the 161,000 arrests during the year-earlier period, roughly 68% of which were adults.

The number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the border—most surrender to the first border agent they can find—also has soared in the last couple of months. The number of families arrested has more than quadrupled since December, while the figure for unaccompanied children has risen by more than 90%. Border agents have been apprehending at least 500 children a day in March, and border officials expect to have taken at least 16,000 children into custody by the end of the month.

Single adults are almost all immediately sent back to Mexico under a 1944 public-health law, bypassing the normal arrest process and depriving them of a chance to ask for humanitarian protection. That public-health law, called Title 42, was implemented by then-President  Donald Trump  at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last March and has been maintained by President Biden.

Families were also turned back under Title 42, but that has been harder to do since November, when Mexico passed a law banning family detention. Some Mexican states have since refused to take back most families with young children, so the administration has been releasing families into the U.S. instead.

In some cases, families that are refused by Mexican officials in south Texas are flown to west Texas or even California, where other Mexican officials have agreed to take them back.

The Trump administration stopped applying the Title 42 policy to unaccompanied minors in November after a federal court ruled the practice illegal. Although that decision was later overturned, the Biden administration decided to continue allowing minors into the country, where they live in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services until the government can find them suitable adult guardians. The government is working to build a temporary HHS facility at the site of a massive Border Patrol tent complex in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley to more quickly transfer children and help ease crowding there.

Released families and unaccompanied children are allowed to live in the U.S. for the duration of their asylum cases, which can take years to complete. Most Central American migrants ultimately lose their cases, according to Justice Department data.

Migration began ticking up last spring and summer as migrants opted to leave home amid sagging economies, famine and violence—all exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, experts say. A pair of back-to-back hurricanes devastated parts of Guatemala and Honduras in November, and more migrants are coming from those two countries than El Salvador, which during past surges was a larger source of migration.

Many migrants also say they believe that Mr. Biden is more welcoming than Mr. Trump, who targeted illegal immigration in his campaigns and as president. The notion of the U.S. being more welcoming has been reinforced through the news and on social media as would-be migrants see others successfully entering the U.S.

Some experts also say the numbers have climbed quickly because tens of thousands of people have been waiting in Mexico due to Mr. Trump’s restrictions on access to the U.S. asylum system, resulting in pent-up demand.

Mr. Biden has reversed numerous border and asylum policies implemented by the Trump administration. These include the Migrant Protection Protocols, a program requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided in U.S. courts, and multiple policies barring migrants from qualifying for asylum, including a rule disqualifying them if they passed through a third country en route to the U.S. without making a claim in that country.

On his first day in office, Mr. Biden announced 100-day pause on deportations, which has been  temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Texas . On the same day, the president proposed  a broad immigration bill  that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. without a permanent legal status, and an expedited pathway for farmworkers and certain young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have lived in the country illegally. The Biden administration also  ended agreements signed by the Trump administration  that allowed the U.S. to send some asylum seekers in the U.S. to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Statistical comparisons aren’t smooth, but the increases aren’t unprecedented. In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the number of unaccompanied children arrested was about 65,000, outpacing the totals for those periods during 2014 and 2019, according to government data. The number of people traveling as families detained was about 141,000, more than five times the number in the 2014 period, but far slower than the 2019 period, when that figure was about 248,000. The roughly 519,000 single adults arrested was more than double the number arrested during the period in 2014 and more than three times the number for 2019.

The increase in single adults doesn’t strain the shelter infrastructure because these migrants are expelled immediately, but it does demand more of border agents who must pursue and arrest them.

The growing number of children is harder to manage during the pandemic, the government says, because there is limited space inside, and that has strained the government’s network of child migrant shelters. The Biden administration has moved quickly  to open large, emergency shelters  to accommodate them.

HHS had expanded its shelter space in the last several years in anticipation of future surges, but it then reduced capacity by 40% to allow for social distancing, and by January, shelter space was almost full.

Families in one Border Patrol sector are now being tested by a Border Patrol contractor as they are released at bus stations or to local aid groups. The agency says it is trying to expand that contract service, but for now that task is being left to local governments, shelters and other nonprofits. Recently the federal government has announced some funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse them.

Mr. Biden has few  short-term options to slow the influx  without turning to the aggressive deterrence strategies of the past. The administration is pressing Mexico to step up immigration enforcement on its border with Guatemala and along the routes most migrants follow. The U.S. government is also focusing on the logistical challenge of moving children through the system as quickly as possible.

Mr. Biden faces criticism from the right and the left on the issue. Republicans have criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to roll back Trump-era policies, saying that improved security and stricter admissions practices deter prospective migrants from making the journey, keep Americans safe and protect jobs they say immigrants take unfairly.

Progressives, meanwhile, have called for an overhaul of U.S. immigration policies, saying that allowing more migrants and improving protections for those already in the U.S. is a social-justice concern and would bring economic benefits to the nation, as immigrants do jobs that many Americans won’t.

Republicans and some Democrats, especially those from border states, are concerned about states being strained by the increasing number of people and have called for more resources.