Donald Trump rails against an “onslaught of illegal aliens” possibly including MS-13 gang members and “Middle Easterners” poised to invade the US; news organizations cover the slow progress of a migrant caravan heading through Mexico as if it were a looming hurricane; humanitarian workers from California to Texas struggle to provide shelter for an unprecedented number of families released from border patrol holding cells.
Going by the headlines of the day, you might be forgiven for thinking that the US is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis of illegal migration across its southern frontier.
But illegal border crossings have declined significantly from record highs in the early years of the 21st century.
According to the latest statistics from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 396,579 undocumented people were apprehended after entering the country illegally in 2018.
Another 124,511 people presented themselves at ports of entry, many seeking humanitarian protection, but immigration officials found them inadmissible.
In 2000, however, more than 1.6 million illegal border crossers were apprehended. In 2001, the figure was 1.3 million.
In the early 2000s, the largest group of undocumented migrants caught entering the US were Mexican men crossing to work. When caught, border patrol sent them back without long-term detention or court proceedings.
Many crossed again and again and some eventually succeeded in evading border enforcement. The high apprehension numbers certainly include many individuals caught and counted more than once.
Small ups and downs in the flow continued until a significant drop off at the end of the decade – from 556,041 in 2009 to 340,252 in 2011 – coinciding with the great recession, and the disappearance of the jobs many migrants came for.
In the following years, apprehension numbers continued to fluctuate between 350,000-500,000, with a low of 310,531 in 2017.
Observers attribute that steep decline to economic growth in Mexico, ramped-up border enforcement, and the “Trump effect”, which deterred some migrants.
But as the numbers of Mexican immigrants decreased, more Central Americans – including unaccompanied teenagers, single parents with children and entire families – crossed the border, many of them fleeing conditions of extreme violence.
Young people fled gang recruitment, persecution by police working with organized crime, and threats of rape and death. Mothers and fathers undertook the arduous journey to escape the dangers posed by corrupt officials, gangs and security forces.
Families also fled conditions of extreme poverty, multiple crop failures exacerbated by climate change and moribund economies void of jobs.
Unlike adults crossing the border looking for work, families with children and individuals seeking asylum cannot be deported quickly; asylum takes months and years in immigration court.
Adults are often detained for the duration of the legal process, but current law forbids the government from detaining children for long periods.
The government can detain families together, but it doesn’t have nearly enough space to hold all of the families now coming. CBP apprehension statistics released on Tuesday for fiscal year 2018 show steep increases in recent months – mostly families with children – a total of 16,658 people in September alone.
Here on the border, Trump’s hardline rhetoric collides with the reality of thousands of refugee families already here who cannot be imprisoned indefinitely, nor can they be quickly removed, at least according to current law.
Churches and other volunteers gladly shelter those set free because the government’s immigration prisons are full.
Having failed to build his wall, Trump will ramp up construction of detention camps for families and children.
Radical anti-immigrant bureaucrats in the executive branch will find new ways to criminalize refugees, separate children from parents, and deploy military personnel on the border.
People will keep walking – and they will follow a northern star.
Molly Molloy is a border and Latin America specialist at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico