▲ The border wall in Tijuana, Baja California, last June.Photo Omar Martínez/La Jornada BC
Lilian Hernandez Osorio
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 9, 2024, p. 9
In the first half of 2024, U.S. immigration authorities detained 514,314 Mexican migrants who tried to enter the country, a figure that exceeds the 405,844 arrested in 12 months a decade ago. In addition, it means that this year, 2,857 compatriots were detained every day and 119 every hour.
Official figures from the sixth Government Report reveal that since 2018, the number of Mexican migrants seeking to enter the neighboring country to the north has been increasing steadily every year, and with it the number of detainees and deportees has risen.
Six years ago, 307,535 Mexicans were apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities, and in 2019, one year into Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government, 312,130 compatriots were detained, which shows a slight increase.
By 2020, the year in which the pandemic hit and migrant mobility to the United States decreased, the number of Mexicans arrested fell slightly to 308,621 detainees, less than 4,000 people, so the decline was minimal.
According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior that were included in the statistical annexes, the growth of compatriots arrested between 2014 and 2023 was 80.8 percent, going from 405,844 to 733,811, which shows that not even the help of social programs has stopped the migration phenomenon in the country.
In 2022, U.S. immigration authorities detained 820,410 Mexican migrants who attempted to enter the country, the highest number so far in the current administration and in the last 10 years, with 2021 being the second year with the most Mexicans apprehended, with 672,856 compatriots.
Tonatiuh Guillén, a researcher at the University Program of Development Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explained that this increase after 2020 is due to a post-pandemic effect and the forced displacement of entire families.
He explained earlier that the group of adults traveling alone predominated among Mexican migrants; today they have been surpassed by the group of families traveling together, because they all have to leave their localities due to situations of violence.
Forced displacement, he said, has forced families to flee with the intention of crossing into the United States, which in turn has increased detentions. The growing migration is a consequence of the internal difficulties
in terms of security and also the deterioration of the economy, said the former commissioner of the National Migration Institute (INM) in the first years of this administration.
The annual breakdown of apprehensions of Mexicans by US authorities indicates that between 2014 and 2024, the lowest figure was in 2017 with 264,716; in 2018 it was 307,535; which rose slightly in 2019 to 312,130.
However, between 2021 and 2024 the growth has been greater, since three years ago the authorities of that country arrested 672,856 Mexicans, rising to 820,410 in 2022; 733,811 in 2023 and close to half a million between January and June of this year.
