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Southwest border encounters

Estimated unapprehended crossings

2022 and 2023 unapprehended crossings are based on unpublished government estimates.

Recent years have seen a jump in the number of migrants coming to the U.S. border.

We’ve had spikes in the past.

What’s different now is more migrants are turning themselves in instead of trying to escape arrest.

And the repercussions are being felt in different places across the country.

The New Effects of Immigration

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The chief of police in Whitewater, Wisconsin, didn’t ask for the moon in late 2023 when he wrote to President Joe Biden about the hundreds of new Nicaraguan migrants who’d arrived in his city over a whirlwind span of two years. All of a sudden, he wrote, his 23 sworn officers were dealing with three times the number of drivers without licenses on local roads.

Biden administration officials didn’t get back to the chief for almost two months. And when former President Donald Trump learned about Whitewater’s predicament, he seized on it as further evidence that the United States was being overrun by “migrant crime” and promised voters he would conduct the “largest deportation in American history,” though that’s not at all what the chief was asking for, much less how he saw his city.

The small Wisconsin town is one of a number of American communities that have experienced the strains of a new phase of immigration whose origins and meaning have been obscured during this year’s presidential election by Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and the reluctance of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to clearly address the Biden administration’s track record on the issue.

A ProPublica Series

The New Immigration

A deeply reported picture of what’s happening on the border and in cities and towns across the United States.

In the coming days, ProPublica will publish a series of stories that we hope will be of use to voters, especially those focused on immigration as a key issue. We aim to provide a more complete picture of what’s happening on the border and in cities and towns across the United States. Amid the misleading bombast of the campaigns, our reporting on the ground and analysis of government data will explain the real challenges — as opposed to the ones being made up to scare you — posed by immigration trends at the Southwest border over the past decade.

We’ve found that what’s changed most about the border isn’t just the number of migrants coming across. It’s who’s coming and how. Many of today’s migrants are coming from new places and in new ways that make their arrivals more visible and, at times, more costly to the communities where they settle. And those changes are coinciding with, if not helping drive, a hardening in public opinion.

Our analysis of immigration court and census data found that while the number of times U.S. officials encountered migrants at the border spiked in the past three years, only a small share of Americans live in neighborhoods that saw a significant number of new arrivals when compared with their populations. We found that migrants were concentrated in relatively few places around the country.

In places like Whitewater that were ill-prepared for those increases, the new arrivals created small pockets of upheaval that, thanks to television and the internet, spilled into the public consciousness. Meanwhile in large Democratically controlled urban centers like New York and Chicago, where migrants have settled for generations, the new arrivals including some bused north by Republican governors seeking to make political points — strained resources in ways that set off flashes of resentment.

In Denver last year, taxpayers watched their city government provide months of free housing to Venezuelan migrants, while many in its long-standing homeless population languished on the streets. In Belle Glade, Florida, a farmer who’d long depended on immigrant labor had a change of heart after he became a state lawmaker, helping pass restrictions against hiring undocumented workers.

And at the border, in Del Rio, Texas, residents who had long been accustomed to the rhythms of crossings between the U.S. and Mexico were shaken by the swift and sudden arrival of nearly 20,000 predominantly Haitian migrants — a number that amounts to more than half the local population. Three years later, residents fear that such a destabilizing event could happen again. One Democratic candidate for sheriff there has taken positions so openly critical of his own party that local Republicans invited him to join their side.

Public opinion polls show that concern and confusion about immigration persist among Americans beyond Del Rio. To understand why, consider the chart Trump shared with his supporters during a rally in July in Butler, Pennsylvania. It showed the numbers of migrants encountered at the Southwest border over the past decade. Trump turned to it in the split second a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. He says he loves the chart, even gushing about sleeping with it, because it probably saved his life. But the reason he’s continued to display it at subsequent rallies is that it shows the record jump in encounters that occurred under Biden and Harris, which he says is evidence of the administration’s failure.

What Trump doesn’t say is that the increase actually began while he was still in office. Meanwhile, Harris has touted the tough asylum restrictions the Biden administration has imposed this election year that have led to dramatic decreases in the number of illegal crossings. But she doesn’t talk about why it took so long to do so. And she says even less about how some of her own allies accuse her of adopting immigration proposals they say are similar to Trump’s.

Voters could be forgiven for not knowing whom to believe, for feeling there is an unprecedented crisis at the border. But in past years, according to government estimates, there were many more migrants who crossed into the U.S. illegally and didn’t get caught. It might not come through in Republican talking points, but those of us over 20 have probably lived through periods of higher rates of border crossings before.

Shifting Demographics

Mexico

Southwest border encounters

El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala

Other countries

Shifting Demographics

The migrants arriving in the past few years came from a broader array of countries, including some that either can’t or won’t take them back. In some cases they’ve landed here without established networks of relatives who could support them. Those let in to pursue asylum claims are allowed to stay until their cases are resolved by the woefully backlogged immigration courts, a process that can take years. Many won’t ultimately qualify, but in the meantime they can apply for work permits and for some public benefits. There are now around 3.5 million pending cases in the immigration court system, up from some 400,000 a decade ago.

Former President Barack Obama oversaw the beginning of these major shifts when he took office in 2009. It was the end of a decade when over 90% of the millions arrested trying to illegally cross the border were from Mexico, and most were single adults. His administration actively pursued border crossers at a rate that outraged immigration advocates, who derisively dubbed him the “deporter-in-chief.”

In his second term, an increasing number of Central American children and families began coming mostly from a region known as the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. This was the first sign of the trend in which more people started crossing the border and didn’t attempt to avoid Border Patrol, but instead turned themselves in to ask for asylum. Under U.S. and international laws, they couldn’t be sent back to a place where they could face persecution.

Obama couldn’t easily deport them, but detaining children and families became a losing logistical, humanitarian and political proposition. The numbers of people arriving were at the lowest levels since the 1970s, partly because of the administration’s crackdown on many border crossers and because the country was recovering from a recession, when fewer jobs were available.

Enter Donald Trump, gliding down an escalator to announce his first presidential bid in 2015. The years of low numbers of border crossings didn’t stop him from casting the situation as a crisis and making the construction of a border wall one of the pillars of his campaign platform.

After taking office in 2017, Trump didn’t make much progress on building a wall, but he made strides overhauling the country’s asylum system. He argued that because so many migrants are ultimately found to be ineligible for asylum in court, they were using the process as a loophole to gain entry to the U.S. His administration moved swiftly to enact new restrictions, including forcing tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for court hearings and separating parents from their children at the border.

Crossings still rose sharply in 2019, going so high that Trump officials said the system was at a “breaking point” and, in turn, released hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S. After the pandemic began in March 2020, the Trump administration used a public health policy known as Title 42 to allow border agents to expel migrants to Mexico without giving them a chance to seek asylum.

Trump’s policy helped usher in another shift in new migration patterns. Mexico initially only agreed to accept expulsions of its own nationals and those from some Central American countries under Title 42. Almost everyone else couldn’t be expelled, and many who hoped to claim asylum were released into the United States. Thanks in part to social media, word got out among migrants in nations that were being convulsed by conflict, political turmoil and natural disasters, and people from other countries began coming to the border in larger numbers.

When Biden took office promising a more humane approach to immigration, that trend exploded. He initially kept his word and quickly overturned many of Trump’s policies. But he left Title 42 in place even after the pandemic began subsiding.

Media reports showed thousands of men, women and children making perilous journeys through the inhospitable jungle region between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap. People from China, India and West Africa were paying smugglers tens of thousands of dollars in some cases to fly them to Nicaragua and deliver them to the Southwest border. News stories then showed them illegally crossing the U.S. border by clamoring under razor wire and wading across the Rio Grande but then immediately turning themselves in to officials.

By 2023, when encounters at the Southwest border reached an unprecedented 2.5 million, just 29% were from Mexico, 20% were from northern Central America and the rest came from dozens of nations around the world.

Border Patrol arrests of Venezuelans

Border Patrol arrests of Nicaraguans

Border Patrol arrests of Haitians

Border Patrol arrests of Cubans

As more Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans arrived, those countries’ poor diplomatic relations with the United States made it difficult to quickly remove them. Haitians also came in large numbers, including many who had already left their country and were living in South America.

Much like what happened in 2019 under Trump, the soaring numbers of families and migrants coming in large groups overwhelmed the border’s infrastructure. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents didn’t have the capacity to either detain or deport the migrants they were apprehending, so they began releasing more of them into the United States.

Legal, but in Limbo

Removals and Releases by U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Releases

Deportations, expulsions and returns

Legal, but in Limbo

With no clear place to go, migrants gathered on the streets of U.S. border cities. The Republican governor of Texas paid to bus people north to Democratically controlled cities like Chicago, where families ended up sleeping on the floors of police stations.

New York’s laws, which guarantee shelter to everyone, made the city a particularly attractive destination. As the numbers of migrants arriving there swelled beyond the capacity of the shelter system, Mayor Eric Adams sided with Republicans in criticizing his own party’s management of the border.

Recent data shows that more than 200,000 asylum-seekers have accessed the city’s shelter system since 2022. As of August, tens of thousands were Venezuelans, who had a relatively thin network of relatives and friends to help integrate them into the city. Their arrival stands in stark contrast to Chinese immigrants who came to New York in similar numbers as Venezuelans. But, due in part to the city’s large Chinese population, they did not depend anywhere near as much on the city shelter system.

Facing criticism from both parties, the Biden administration tried to deter migrants from risking their lives to cross the border illegally and turn themselves in. Instead, it wanted them to go to a legal port of entry. In May 2023, when Title 42 was lifted, officials implemented a new rule that barred most migrants from requesting asylum unless they made an appointment to approach the border using a government app called CBP One. The app allows only 1,450 slots per day, causing thousands of people to wait in Mexico, where they routinely fall prey to criminal groups.

Beyond those migrants released into the country at the border through CBP One, around 828,000 have been allowed to enter through new temporary humanitarian parole programs. Most of those people applied from abroad and have a U.S. sponsor.

In June, the Biden administration took the restrictions further. It barred most people from requesting asylum at the border when crossings reached a certain threshold, but it set that limit so low it essentially made the ban permanent. In addition, Mexico agreed to work with the Biden administration to keep migrants from reaching the border by stepping up its own enforcement. The administration says the efforts have allowed the government to vastly speed up screenings and deportations and have reduced releases, while allowing exceptions for unaccompanied children and trafficking victims. Advocates for immigrants slammed the rule as mirroring measures put in place by Trump and said it is putting people with legitimate claims at risk. But the measures have had an impact. The number of people crossing illegally in July and August, after the rule went into effect, dropped to the lowest levels in four years.

Demand for Workers

Job openings per unemployed person

1.1

First year of the pandemic

Demand for Workers

Whether they cross the border undetected, turn themselves in and ask for asylum or are granted parole, migrants are drawn to our southern border by the opportunity to work. When businesses across the country were shuttered in early 2020 by the pandemic, border encounters briefly plummeted. In the recovery, American companies created more jobs than there were unemployed people to fill them.

“There’s the elephant in the room: There’s just a lot of jobs, and people want to come,” said Dany Bahar, an economist at the Washington-based Center for Global Development who has researched border crossings and labor market tightness. He said that as the U.S. population ages, the need for workers from elsewhere is only going to grow. “I haven’t seen any politician talk about this, neither Democrats or Republicans.”

Only a limited number of temporary visas and green cards are made available each year for those wanting to migrate to the U.S. legally for work, while refugee admissions — which can lead to U.S. citizenship — are also capped. “Those numbers are ridiculous when considered alongside the size of our economy and U.S. workforce,” said Leon Rodriguez, who directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, said the unemployment rate — which has remained low despite the increase in recent immigrant arrivals — did not account for the millions of disaffected and disabled American workers who had dropped out of the labor force because they couldn’t compete with migrants who were willing to accept “below-the-table wages.”

But what Vance didn’t say was that Republicans and conservative groups have opposed efforts to significantly raise the federal minimum wage. Meanwhile both campaigns offer many more proposals for expanding border security than they do realistic ones to address our country’s dependence on migrant labor. Nor do they talk about plans for cracking down on employers who exploit immigrant workers.

In Houma, Louisiana, a shipbuilding company with millions in federal contracts embodies the debate. Campaign finance records indicate that the company’s chief was giving tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to politicians who call for shutting down illegal immigration even as the shipbuilder struggled to deal with a nationwide shortage of welders. Through a contractor, it employed a young, undocumented man from Guatemala, according to his family, to do the dangerous work of helping to build one of the country’s most sophisticated ships. After he died on the job, the worker’s family said, the company gave them nothing, nor is it required by law.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Hardening Attitudes

Americans' Views on Whether Immigration Should Decrease, Increase or Stay the Same

Decrease

Increase

Stay the same

Hardening Attitudes

Going into this election, recent Gallup polls have shown that across party lines, a growing number of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe immigration levels should be decreased. Another recent poll found a majority of Americans support some form of mass deportation.

Mike Madrid, a Republican pollster, said immigration is an emotional issue for voters rather than a rational one. He said it “literally defines who we are as a people,” adding, “It’s how we perceive the world through our racial and national identity and, at the same time, plays to our worst fears as human beings when people who are not like us end up in our neighborhoods and communities.”

It’s no surprise that the findings of those polls are reflected in the presidential campaigns. Just like he did when he ran against Hillary Clinton, Trump makes every effort to keep the issue high on voters’ minds, resorting to nativist rhetoric when talking about immigrants and their impact on the country. The Biden administration has imposed restrictions on asylum much like Trump’s, and Harris makes clear that she will embrace them. At every opportunity that she has to speak about the issue, Harris promises that if she’s elected president she will push for the passage of a bipartisan border deal that includes enforcement provisions demanded by Republicans.

It’s unclear whether she’d be successful. Congress hasn’t passed a comprehensive immigration reform package in decades, and Republicans aren’t likely to give Harris such an important political victory.

Trump’s sweeping campaign promises revolve largely around using executive authority to “seal the border” and forcibly remove masses of undocumented immigrants from the country. It’s highly likely that those actions would be challenged in court, much like many measures were in his first term.

What isn’t being talked about on the campaign trail is how all the changes in the past decade are affecting communities like Whitewater today. While we won’t have a complete picture of the impact of the post-pandemic spike in border crossings until next year, census data shows that — even with all the people who crossed the border in the first years of the Biden administration — the foreign-born share of the U.S. population only increased from 13.7% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2023.

The chief of police in Whitewater wasn’t asking for the border to shut down, or for all the Nicaraguans who worked in local factories to be deported. But with so many new Nicaraguan drivers on the roads without licenses, he just hoped the federal government might kick in some money so he could hire more staff to help manage the added workload. His concerns are more typical of how people are experiencing the new effects of immigration today. And if you’re looking to make sense of the issue before you cast your ballot, then you need to hear from them.

About the Data

Total Southwest Border Encounters Chart

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security data. Encounters include both U.S. Border Patrol arrests and Office of Field Operations apprehensions, which can result in release, detention or removal. Only includes full fiscal years.


Unapprehended Crossings Chart

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates of unapprehended crossing rates at the Southwest border. For 2022 and 2023, we used an unpublished government estimate.


Southwest Border Encounters by Nationality Chart

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security data. Includes encounters by U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations. Only includes full fiscal year data. Individual nationality charts are only U.S. Border Patrol arrests. Monthly data updated through June 2024.


Removals and Releases Chart

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Only includes full fiscal year data, which was updated through June 2024. Note: Removals include total deportations, expulsions and returns by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as counted by: Title 8 repatriations, Title 42 expulsions and Migrant Protection Protocols. Releases include: U.S. Border Patrol releases, Office of Field Operations paroles and transfers to Health and Human Services. Data does not include transfers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, which can result in deportation or release. Data does not include other uncategorized outcomes, which are usually less than 1% of total encounters. Data also does not include humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Afghans and Ukrainians, which are not counted in this CBP dataset.


Americans’ Views on Immigration Chart

Source: Gallup


Job Openings Over Time Chart

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics


Immigration Court Data and U.S. Census Data Analysis

For this story, ProPublica used immigration court records from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau to analyze how many Americans live in neighborhoods that saw a significant number of new arrivals when compared with their populations. We relied on address information listed on about 4 million immigration court cases initiated since the start of 2021 for nondetained migrants. We did not screen cases out based on their charge or the result of the case, if they reached one (though we examined those in checking our work). Note that migrants entering under humanitarian parole programs and those who successfully evaded border officials likely do not appear in the court data unless they later encountered law enforcement or were placed in immigration proceedings for other reasons. Migrants could also have moved without updating their addresses. For overall population figures, we relied on the 2020 decennial census, while for foreign-born population figures, we relied on the 2019 5-year American Communities Survey. We compared the court data to the population at several geographies: census ZIP code tabulation areas, counties and — in the case of New York — cities.

Graphics, design and development by Lucas Waldron, Zisiga Mukulu and Lena Groeger. Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel contributed reporting.