Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 162,000 migrants in March who crossed the southwest border with Mexico between ports of entry. This brought the year-to-date apprehension numbers up to nearly 1.06 million migrants during the first six months of FY23.
Migrant apprehensions jumped by 25 percent from February’s reported 130,024 arrests to 162,317 in March, according to the CBP Southwest Land Border Encounters report released after hours on Monday evening. This brought the total for the first six months of the fiscal year to 1,055,320 migrants.
“Overall, in March, encounters of individuals on the Southwest border between ports of entry were down 23% from the prior year, as we continue to respond to the challenges presented by increasing global migration,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy A. Miller said in the agency’s monthly operational update. The agency added that the numbers are also down by four percent from March 2021, President Joe Biden’s second full month in office.What the commissioner did not report is that more than 162,000 migrant apprehensions in March are up by 434 percent from March 2020 during President Donald Trump’s last full year in office. The March 2020 report shows agents apprehended 30,389 migrants. In March 2023, the El Paso and Tucson Sectors both exceeded the March 2020 total for the entire southwest border region.
