Who Really Crosses the U.S.-Mexico Border?
The total number of unauthorized immigrants apprehended is on the rise, but they're no longer coming from America's nearest neighbor.
For the first time (as of 2014) in more than 60 years, more non-Mexicans than Mexicans were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol at checkpoints in 2014, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Approximately 257,000 non-Mexicans were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2014, compared to about 229,000 Mexicans, according to the recently released data. The total number of unauthorized immigrant apprehensions is up 16 percent from the prior year.
At first glance, it may seem unsurprising that non-Mexican apprehensions would outnumber Mexican apprehensions since the data includes all the border points and not just the U.S.-Mexico border. However, non-Mexican apprehensions stayed below 250,000 until this year, while throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, Mexican apprehensions mostly stayed above 1 million each year, peaking in 2000 at 1.6 million.
Despite the decrease, however, Pew notes that the estimated 5.9 million undocumented immigrants from Mexico still remain the majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States at 52 percent, with a median duration of stay for adults at 13 years.
