October 22, 2024 Dear John, Earlier today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection put out data on migrant encounters for all of fiscal year 2024. Our colleagues Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto are out with a fast but detailed analysis of encounters at and between ports of entry, looking at the factors driving the 14 percent decrease in encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border—down to 2.1 million from a high of nearly 2.5 million last year. September marked the lowest monthly encounters of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization seen during this administration—with the 54,000 encounters a steep drop from the all-time monthly high of 250,000 recorded in December 2023. The short read, With New Strategies At and Beyond the U.S. Border, Migrant Encounters Plunge, examines the Biden administration playbook that along with rising Mexican enforcement is responsible for the successes—as well as whether it can endure over time. The carrot-and-stick U.S. strategy rests on narrowing asylum eligibility for migrants who cross the border illegally, expanding the use of lawful migration pathways, and encouraging Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and other regional partners to increase their migration controls and enforcement. “Taken together, these policies have ushered in a new era of migration management in response to unprecedented changes in flows over the last three and a half years,” the analysts write. “These efforts represent new and innovative approaches to managing migration, even as they are subject to litigation and change. At the same time, their impacts have been disparate across nationalities and severely limit access to protection for some. The Biden playbook, therefore, should be considered a starting point for innovations in managing dynamic border flows rather than the end game.” The full analysis can be read here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/fy2024-us-border-encounters-plunge. |
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| The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. For more on MPI, please visit www.migrationpolicy.org. |
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