October 22, 2022 Dear John, The United States recorded a record-breaking 2.38 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border for the fiscal year that ended September 30, well surpassing the prior peak of 1.6 million apprehensions seen in fiscal year (FY) 2000. While many will focus entirely on the nearly 2.4 million number issued last night by the Department of Homeland Security, there is a much bigger story behind this figure, as Migration Policy Institute (MPI) Policy Analyst Ariel G. Ruiz Soto explains in a timely new commentary. The changing composition of flows—with encounters of Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans for the first time outpacing those of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, as well as rising arrivals from South America, the Caribbean, and beyond—underscores the increasingly hemispheric nature of migration to the U.S. border. Where once flows from Mexico and Northern Central America overwhelmingly dominated the list, comprising 96 percent of arrivals five years ago, they had fallen to 57 percent for FY 2022. “U.S. enforcement policies long directed toward arrivals from Mexico and Northern Central America are misaligned—underscoring the need for new regional approaches,” Ruiz Soto writes. “Failing to understand the complex story behind these trends not only stymies the development and implementation of policies to better manage chaotic migration flows, but also misses the opportunity to inform the creation of regional relationships and policies that can address the new and shared realities of large-scale migration that increasingly begins much further south than Mexico or Northern Central America.” I commend this important commentary to your attention. You can read it here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/2022-record-migrant-encounters-us-mexico-border. And for more of MPI’s work analyzing changing migration trends and articulating strategies to improve migration management and humanitarian protection systems in the United States and the broader region as well as tackle the conditions that spur migration, check out our Building a Regional Migration System project and our Latin America and Caribbean Initiative. Sincerely,  Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Migration Policy Institute | 
