The border authorities of the United States have registered in fiscal year 2021 more than 1.7 million arrests of migrants at the border with Mexico, which is the highest annual figure since these data began to be counted.
The Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP, for its acronym in English) has published this Friday the data for the end of fiscal year 2021 – from October 2020 to September 2021 – in which the number of arrests has been of 1,734,686.
The previous peak had been recorded in fiscal year 2000, when 1.64 million arrests for illegal crossings on the southern border were accumulated.
Thus, in the last fiscal year there has been a massive increase in migration to the border between the United States and Mexico that reached its maximum during the summer, reports the US media CBS.
About 61 percent of those detained were expelled to Mexico or their countries of origin under Title 42, a measure taken by former President Donald Trump in the context of the pandemic emergency. Among the total arrested were people from more than 160 countries.
The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, whom the president, Joe Biden, has commissioned to manage the migratory crisis, has referred this Friday in an appearance before the media to these data and has recalled that when the current Administration came to power ” he inherited a system on the border that was practically destroyed. “
“There was no meaningful system for processing asylum cases. The structure was in really bad shape. And it is taking some time to fix it and get it back up and running,” Harris said.
Likewise, she has recognized that Washington has to “understand the immediate problems that it must address, including rebuilding the system, and make it humane and fair.” “Also, part of the work that I have been doing is examining the root causes that make people leave their countries of origin to make that trip (…). We are seeing progress in both directions,” she added.
