The number of unaccompanied immigrant children getting caught crossing the southwest border has fallen by nearly half since last year amid increased immigration enforcement in Mexico, several new reports show.
The upshot for Georgia: Fewer of them are being released to the custody of relatives living in the Peach State while they undergo deportation proceedings. Just 361 have been placed in Georgia during the first six months of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, according to federal statistics. That represents less than a quarter of the 2,047 who were placed in Georgia in all of the previous fiscal year.
Between Oct. 1 and April 30, federal immigration authorities apprehended 18,919 of the children on the southwest border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics. That’s down 48 percent from the same time frame the previous fiscal year, when 36,280 were apprehended.
One possible reason: Mexico has deported a record number of unaccompanied Central American children since last fall, a Pew Research Center report shows. Between October and February, Mexico carried out 3,819 deportations of these children, a 56 percent increase over the same time period the year before.
Most of the children who began pouring across the border in 2014 came from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. They said they were fleeing the poverty and gang violence that have wracked their home countries.
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