Stricter U.S. migration controls keep border crossings at 2-year low
El Paso, Texas — Unlawful crossings along the U.S. southern border in February remained at a two-year low for the second consecutive month, illustrating the dent that stricter policies enacted by President Biden this year have made on the unprecedented migration flows recorded since he took office.
U.S. Border Patrol recorded roughly 130,000 apprehensions of migrants who crossed the southern border illegally in February, virtually the same level as in January, when detected unlawful entries plummeted by 40% from a near-record in December, according to internal federal data obtained by CBS News.
For the first time since Mr. Biden took office, Border Patrol agents did not record a spike in migrant apprehensions in the month of February, when migration flows to the U.S. southern border have typically increased before peaking in the spring.
While migrant apprehensions continue to be at historically high levels and are projected to increase sharply in May, the two-year low is a dramatic change from the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border just two months ago, when a massive spike in unlawful migration strained federal and local resources.
"When new policies are announced, there is typically a little bit of a pause when people try to understand what the policies might mean for them," said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute who oversaw the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s. "But this is more than a temporary pause."
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