This October, approximately 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were caught as they were attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. According to data released by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number is double that of October 2014.
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October’s numbers aren’t close to the record numbers seen at the apex of last year’s border crisis. The Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank, projects the US will have apprehended about 36,000 unaccompanied children this year.
The spike comes despite the onset of the cold winter months and what ABC News reports to be “better” border enforcement, increased efforts by the Mexican authorities to reduce the number of Central American migrants flowing into the United States. Though tens of thousands of women and children from Central America were caught at the border in summer 2014, it had dropped by almost half during the 2015 federal fiscal year that ended on September 30. Throughout the air, more precisely from spring up until now, the flow of immigrants has been nearly constant, with over 4,000 people every month.
For the most part, the families and children picked up by authorities illegally crossing the border were from the Central American nation of El Salvador.
According to internal intelligence files from the Homeland Security Department, most families interviewed told Customs and Border Protection officials that smugglers decided where they would try to cross. Here, the uptick in violence (amounting to 30 murders per day just in August) has pushed many to flee the conflictual state.
Rio Grande Valley is notorious as the center of migration in Texas. Nonetheless, according to the recently released report, immigrants are now increasingly venturing to the west. 237 unaccompanied immigrant children were apprehended in Del Rio sector. However, for crossing near Ciudad Acuna the price is lower, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000. The flow of migrants, however, has not diminished, he said, adding that they are moving along other routes, often walking. They do this through media campaigns that are meant to discourage people from starting such a risky journey.
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The majority of those trying to enter the USA illegally during October 2015 were from El Salvador.
