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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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Migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted, falling to a three-year low in June after President Joe Biden imposed a major crackdown on people who crossed into the United States seeking asylum — though the numbers are still roughly double what they averaged during former President Donald Trump's administration, excluding the pandemic period.
About 84,000 migrants crossed the southern border without authorization in June according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by CBS News. That would be the lowest monthly level since Biden assumed the presidency in January 2021, when apprehensions were numbering around 75,000 per month.
Last month, Biden announced a new immigration executive action that would protect an estimated 500,000 people who are married to U.S. citizens from deportation and presents them a pathway to citizenship.
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The policy is aimed at helping migrants who have been living in the United States for more than a decade and have built their lives and families here.
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The June decline in border crossings is the fourth — and sharpest — consecutive monthly decline in a downward trend in that began in the spring.
According to government data, 118,000 migrants were apprehended in May compared to 129,000 in April, which was down from 137,000 in March and 141,000 in February.
Crossings sharply decreased in remote parts of Arizona and California that had become hotspots for illegal entries.
The monthly data comes just two weeks after Biden imposed a major crackdown on the ability of migrants to claim asylum if they crossed the border anywhere other than officials points of entry.
In the past week, the average of daily migrant apprehensions declined below 2,000, which was nearly half of May's 3,800 average. The figure inches closer to the 1,500 threshold the Biden administration set to target regarding migrants illegally entering the U.S.
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Biden's executive order, which exempts unaccompanied children, has helped curb entries and allowed border officials to deport illegal migrants back to their home countries more efficiently.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday that since the Biden administration implemented the new policy that prohibits migrants from seeking asylum if they cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully, border patrol encounters are down more than 40 percent.
Multiple factors have been cited for the plunge, including a campaign by Mexican officials to reduce U.S.-bound migration by carrying out more deportations to southern Mexico and preventing migrants from boarding caravans headed for the U.S.
The 84,000 border apprehensions last month are still nearly double the average of monthly apprehensions that happened during the Trump administration, which amounted to roughly 45,000 between January 2017 and February 2020, before pandemic-era policies brought immigration to a near halt.
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