Illegal Border Crossings Fall A Staggering Ninety Percent In Arizona

Illegal border crossings in Arizona “plunged” in December of 2019, according to the Associated Press, dropping a staggering 90% year-over-year following a Trump administration change in policy that has asylum seekers waiting for their adjudication hearings in Mexico and not in the United States.

Last winter, a “record number” of illegal border crossers were apprehended in the Arizona sector of the United States-Mexico border, with 60,000 migrants taken into United States Border Protection custody in December of 2019 alone, per the Washington Examiner.

The Border Patrol credits the Trump administration’s new “remain in Mexico” policy, which requires those who want to seek refuge from violence and disorder by emigrating to the United States to stay south of the border until their asylum case comes before a judge. Before that policy took effect, asylum seekers were given a piece of paper with a court date and then released into the United States to stay with friends and family until they had to appear before a judge.

“Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector nearly hit 14,000 in May, when the policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico took effect there. By October, they fell 94%, to less than 800, and have stayed there since, making Yuma the second-slowest of the agency’s nine sectors on the Mexican border, just ahead of the perennially quiet Big Bend sector in Texas,” the AP reported.

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