Migrants met at US-Mexico border exceed 2 million

With one month left in fiscal year 2022, the number of arrests of undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border has surpassed 2 million for the first time, according to data released by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

CBP data show that nationwide, the total encounters for the past 11 months reached 2.49 million, and the US-Mexico border alone numbered 2.15 million.

The August number showed that the number of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua has increased by 175 percent in August over last year, while migrants from Mexico and Central America decreased by 43 percent, a downward trend for the third consecutive month.

Because the US doesn't have diplomatic relations with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, the government can't repatriate the migrants as they do with people from other countries, leading to increasing numbers of asylum seekers.

The New York Times reported that Homeland Security data and court filings showed that more than 1 million undocumented immigrants from more than 150 countries have been allowed into the country temporarily after crossing the border since President Joe Biden took office.

In an unusual step, Biden administration officials provided some reporters a background briefing on Monday before CBP's routine monthly release of data. Officials pointed out that more than 1.3 million migrants were removed at the border, also another historical record number, reported the Times.

The illegal border crossings have become an important issue for leaders in Republican-led states. Since April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has bused thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities such as New York and Washington, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also has jumped in.

New York Mayor Eric Adams is considering housing the migrants on a cruise ship, according to The New York Times. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002 considered doing that when the homeless shelter population reached 36,000.

New York has seen an increase of 11,000 migrants to the city. About 2,500 were bused there by Abbott and by border city El Paso, Texas.

Adams criticized the busing of migrants from Texas to the city as a "humanitarian crisis made by human hands, by some of the governors in Southern states" and is considering legal action against Abbott to stop the process.

On Friday. Abbott announced the arrival of two buses of migrants from Texas outside Vice-President Kamala Harris' residence at the US Naval Observatory in Washington. The buses dropped off more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

"Our supposed border czar, Vice-President Harris, has yet to even visit the border to see firsthand the impact of the open border policies she has helped implement, even going so far as to claim the border is ‘secure'," said Abbott.

The Florida Legislature has set aside $12 million to relocate migrants to a "sanctuary destination", DeSantis announced last week. He chartered two planes and dropped 48 migrants — mostly Venezuelans — at Martha's Vineyard, an island south of Cape Cod, on Sept 14 without any warning or notice to the local government. Local churches, homeless shelters and other aid groups had to scramble to accommodate the migrants.

Many Democrats criticized DeSantis for trying to gain votes for the upcoming governor's race and fuel his ambition to run for president in 2024.

Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, where San Antonio, Texas, is located and the migrants were picked up by DeSantis' planes, said Monday that he has launched a criminal investigation into DeSantis' action.

DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske twitted that "immigrants are more than willing to leave Bexar County after being enticed to cross the border and ‘to fend for themselves'".

DeSantis said the migrants all signed consent forms. "Why wouldn't they want to go, given where they were? They were in really, really bad shape and they got to be cleaned up, everything, treated well," he said.

DeSantis said that everyone on the flights had "signed consent forms to go" and that the migrants were given maps and directions on where to go once they arrived in Martha's Vineyard.

"So, it was clearly voluntary, and all the other nonsense you're hearing is just not true," he told National Public Radio.

Tallahassee, Florida-based immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci told The Associated Press that there's a "good faith argument" to be made that enticing migrants onto planes with the promise of jobs makes them crime victims.

"An enticement like that, regardless of whether you sign a waiver, is fraud and that is part of the definition of human trafficking," Ricci explained. "I think that everybody on those planes has a case to legalize as a direct result of being transported by the governor."