The head of the U.S. Border Patrol said his agents made about 420,000 apprehensions along the nation’s borders last fiscal year, a 15 percent increase over the year before and the third straight year the number rose.
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher said the apprehensions involved about 330,000 people from 144 countries, indicating many people are repeatedly attempting to illegally enter the U.S.
As first reported by The Associated Press, Fisher disclosed these figures at a recent conference in Washington.
Fisher did not say where the increased apprehensions are happening. But the government recently released figures showing that by August — 11 months into fiscal year 2013 — federal authorities had already made nearly 27,000 more apprehensions along the southwest border than during all of fiscal year 2012, a 7 percent increase.
Fiscal year 2013 began Oct. 1, 2012, and ended Sept. 30.
Georgia is linked to the southwest border. A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman confirmed last month that some of the illegal immigrants his agency has been apprehending there were on their way to work in the agricultural industries in Georgia and other Southeastern states.
Georgia was home to 425,000 illegal immigrants in 2010, according to a Pew Hispanic Center estimate. A year later, Georgia lawmakers complained the nation’s borders were not secure and approved stringent legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
Much of the illegal border crossings are now happening in South Texas and involve people fleeing crime and joblessness in Central America, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that evaluates migration and refugee policies.
“These are countries that just have parts … that are pretty much beyond where there is any real government presence,” said Meissner, who served as commissioner of the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration. “And the cartels have moved in. The drug trafficking and other cartel extortion activity — kidnapping and so forth — has really risen in Guatemala and Honduras in particular.”
Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. — Eduardo Medina Mora — told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month that his country’s improving economy means “net migration from Mexico is either zero or negative.” Many illegal immigrants entering the U.S. are coming from countries in Central America and South America, and they are traveling through Mexico, Mora said. Mexico is working to tighten security on its southern border, he said.
“We have a very strong and very comprehensive plan to improve the circumstances on our southern border, which is essentially a very open border,” Mora said during a meeting with editors and reporters from the AJC and Mundo Hispanico. “But we are now implementing a major strategy that deals with infrastructure and with policy on how you actually consider those migrants coming from Central America into Mexico.”
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