Illegal border crossings in Arizona “plunged” in December of 2019, according to the Associated Press, dropping a staggering 90% year-over-year following a Trump administration change in policy that has asylum seekers waiting for their adjudication hearings in Mexico and not in the United States.
Last winter, a “record number” of illegal border crossers were apprehended in the Arizona sector of the United States-Mexico border, with 60,000 migrants taken into United States Border Protection custody in December of 2019 alone, per the Washington Examiner. That was the beginning of a surge migrants crossing the United States’ southern border; by May of 2019, the Border Patrol was recording a record number of apprehensions every month, sometimes topping 100,000.
“50,753 people were arrested for trespassing from Mexico in December. It marks the third month in a row that more than 50,000 people have illegally crossed into to the U.S. Another 10,000 people who tried to enter through ports were told they lacked the documents to do so,” according to the Examiner. “Illegal immigration apprehensions at the southern border have skyrocketed since Trump’s first few months in office, when 15,000 to 20,000 people were reported being apprehended per month.”
In Arizona alone, the Border Patrol was registering around 14,000 apprehensions per month by May of 2019, but in October of 2019, there were only 800 apprehensions. In December of 2019, the streak kept up, and apprehensions dropped around 90%. – READ MORE