Mexico–United States border crisis
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The Mexico–United States border crisis is an ongoing migrant crisis in North America concerning the migration of undocumented immigrants from Latin America through Mexico and into the United States.
Motive | Illegal immigration to and asylum seeking in the US |
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Target | Migrants from Central America |
Deaths | 7,216 (1998–2017)[1] At least 853 in 2022[2] |
Arrests | 2.3 million in 2022[3] |
Migrant encounters at the Mexico–U.S. border began to surge in late 2020, reaching a record number of 1.73 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021, 2.76 million in fiscal 2022, and more than 2.8 million in fiscal year 2023. The migrants, who are mostly of Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, Honduran, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan citizenship, are reported to be escaping economic hardship, gang violence and environmental disaster in their home countries (particularly acute in Guatemala and Honduras) to seek asylum in the US.
The number of migrant encounters reached a peak in April 2022, when Border Patrol reported over 224,000 apprehensions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump administration used Title 42 to expel migrants from the United States with a stated aim of reducing public health risks. Towards the end of 2022, a large camp of migrants had formed on the Mexican side of the border waiting for Title 42 to be lifted. The conditions they were living in were described as "dire."
Unlike the demographic of migrants in the preceding years, an increasing proportion of current migrants arriving at the Mexico–US border are children, most of whom are unaccompanied children. In fiscal year 2023, about 137,275 unaccompanied minors crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Policies related to the care and custody of such children have been controversial.