Decades ago, the vast majority of immigrants trying to cross the border between ports of entry were Mexicans. A few years ago, many came from Central American countries known as the Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. But now, according to Border Patrol statistics, the number of people coming from outside these places is increasing and increasing rapidly.
To better understand this trend, CNN dived into the data. Let’s take a look at what we’ve seen, why this change is so important, why it happened, what it looks like on the pitch, and what might happen next.
What we see: There is a big change in who comes to the US-Mexico border. Large numbers of immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle still travel. But the number of immigrants from other countries, represented here in purple, has increased significantly.
In 2007, the number of immigrants in this “other” category was negligible. But since then it has grown dramatically – 11,000% – with the sharpest increase in just the past two years.
U.S. Border Patrol encounters show more immigrants trying to cross the Southwest border from Mexico in July than any other country. But for the first time so far this fiscal year, encounters with immigrants from outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle outpaced encounters with immigrants from those regions.
A handful of countries make up a large part of this border-growing group. The number of encounters by US Border Patrol officials on the southwestern border with immigrants from Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela has increased dramatically over the past two years.
A warning about the numbers: For this analysis, we used U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics on Border Patrol encounters that included both immigrants apprehended and at least temporarily detained at the border, and immigrants immediately deported to their home country and Mexico. This data gives us the best overall picture of who is coming and what is happening at the border.
This is an issue that mostly affects immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle, who are more likely to be subject to Title 42 restrictions than immigrants from other countries.
Why is this important: Doris Meissner, who heads US immigration policy studies at the nonpartisan Institute for Immigration Policy in Washington, says the rise in additional nationalities at the border “makes border practices even more complicated.”
“These populations … require different kinds of responses,” Meissner says. “We have not established an asylum system that has in no way reached the level of difficulty that this change brings.”
But Bier says authorities are not doing enough.
“The Biden administration cannot respond to this new reality with the same old playbook,” he said on Twitter. He told CNN that the administration did exactly that. “Many of the same kinds of reactions,” he says.
Why is this happening: There’s no simple reason why this happens, Bier says.
“There are as many answers as there are countries represented in this group,” he says.
Meissner, who served as commissioner of the Office of Immigration and Naturalization from 1993 to 2000, says the pandemic has played an important role in intensifying economic pressures.
Worsening economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to healthcare are forcing more and more Venezuelans to leave the country, Meissner says, and the growing Venezuelan community in the United States is also a draw.
For Colombians and Nicaraguans, economic instability combined with the pandemic has been the main driver of migration, but he says politics also play a role.
And those who previously saw neighboring Costa Rica as a target are more likely to look elsewhere due to dwindling job opportunities there, he says.
Meissner says rising inflation and unemployment in Colombia are fueling more immigration. Social unrest after a wave of protests in 2021 and political divisions that intensified during the last presidential election also likely influenced immigrants’ decisions, he says.
How it looks in this place: This is not something we can only see with statistics. Both immigrants and Border Patrol officials say they noticed the change.
“The countries we are currently accepting – these nations are flying in, they are coming to the border and they need to be processed, and there are so many that it is challenging the workforce,” he said.
“One room was full of Cubans,” he said. Another was full of people from different countries.
“There were Colombians, Bangladeshis, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians,” he said. “I felt like the whole world was there.”
What could happen next: Like everything border-related, there is a lot of debate about what authorities should do about it.
Bier and Meissner say the changing nature of immigrants at the border shows how badly the US immigration system needs to be overhauled.
“Many, if not most, of these people may not be eligible for asylum, despite fleeing very difficult conditions,” Meissner says. “We desperately need Congress to address immigration laws and make it possible for other legal avenues to come to the United States.”
And he says countries in the Western Hemisphere need to work together and treat migration as a shared responsibility.
So far, there is no sign of this trend slowing down. And Bier and Meissner say they didn’t expect that to happen.
“It’s perfectly reasonable to think that this could take many years, because we don’t have the infrastructure to export people as fast as they come,” Bier says.
