New Migrant Caravan Heads For Overwhelmed US Border

A new caravan of over 3,000 Central American migrants is on it’s way to the U.S. from Chiapas according to Mexican news outlets. Migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, & Cuba are in the caravan. It’s unclear which area of the border they’ll try to cross from.

The Border Patrol recorded more than 3,700 apprehensions along the Southwest Border yesterday—the largest single-day total in more than a decade.  As previously reported there has been such a large number of apprehensions in recent weeks that in West Texas manned crossings were closed so that personnel could be diverted to help process and ensure appropriate care for those in custody.

Chief Operating Officer of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) John Sanders, who spoke at the Border Security Expo in San Antonio, TX today, had this to say about the crisis at the border:

If you look at our 21-day averages for the month of March, we are on track for 100000 people to cross the border. Of those 100,000, 58,000 are family units and 9,000 are unaccompanied children. In total, of that 100,000, roughly 35,000 will be children.  In FY17, we had two groups of 100 people or more cross the border. In FY18 that climbed to 13. So far this fiscal year, we have had 93 groups of 100 or more people cross the border. In 2008, roughly 90% of the individuals that came across the border were from Mexico. Up until 2011, 90% of the people that came across the border were single adults. That’s a very different demographic to what we are seeing today. We are experiencing a humanitarian crisis along the southern border. It is overwhelming, I don’t know another way to describe it.