Mexico has replaced Central America as largest source of migrants taken into custody at the border

Mexico has outpaced the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to become the largest single source of migrants taken into custody along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said Thursday.

CBP acting commissioner Mark Morgan emphasized that overall migrant crossings continued to decrease for the fifth month in a row following a record spike in Central American families and children in May.

CBP took just more than 45,000 people into custody at and between ports of entry in October. Officials have welcomed the decline, which follows a historic influx in the spring overwhelmed border infrastructure and immigration authorities.

The October number still outpaces the 34,871 taken into custody a year ago, in October 2018. Those taken into custody include both migrants apprehended between official border crossings, and those “deemed inadmissible” after presenting themselves at a formal crossing.

Morgan credited the decline — 14 percent from September to October — to Trump administration initiatives aimed at deterring migrants from coming to the border.

Those policies have included efforts to bar non-Mexican migrants from requesting asylum at the U.S. border if they have not already requested asylum in countries they passed through on the way, as well as amplified cooperation from Mexican armed forces in preventing migrants from reaching the United States. 

One of the major initiatives, the “Migrant Protection Protocols” has seen U.S. border authorities send nearly 50,000 migrants — nearly all of them Central American asylum seekers — back across the border into Mexico during the past year to await U.S. court hearings. The migrants often spend months in dangerous border cities, where human rights groups say they have been vulnerable to homelessness, kidnappings and other violence from drug cartels and criminals. The Trump administration says the program — also known as “Remain in Mexico” — has been an effective deterrence strategy.

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