According to Border agents in South Texas migrant families illegally crossing the border hit a record rate in August.
The number of Central American families arrested for entering the United States illegally surged again in August, according to a Trump administration official and Border Patrol agents in South Texas, an increase that comes as the president threatens a government shutdown to extract funding from Congress for a border wall.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expected to publish the most recent border arrest totals this week, and the numbers will be used to gauge the effect of President Donald Trump’s order halting the separation of migrant parents from their children.
Agents working in the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal crossings, say they’ve seen more families turn themselves in and ask for asylum in recent weeks, a potential indication that the policy reversal has encouraged more Central Americans to head north.
“They keep coming and coming,” said one agent. “There were some really large groups. Any time you have to use buses to come and pick them up, that’s not a good sign.”
The agent and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
An administration official briefed on the trend confirmed the increase, but the official said they had not seen August’s final numbers.
This once again shows how the media can impact immigration trends. During the time that Child Separation was heavily in the news, we saw unaccompanied minors trending down. However, with immigration back out of the news we see the number of migrant families trying to come over the border trending upward.
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