The white nationalists in the Trump administration trumpeted the lower numbers after he took office in 2017. Many people seem not to realize that this decline was short lived. Take a look at the government’s own numbers at this link.
The latest numbers, from May 2018 are over 50,000. That’s an enormous increase from May 2017...the biggest increase by far that I see in the data, unless you count March and April 2018.
Apprehensions at the border are way up because the number of people attempting to cross is way up.
The increase is driven by Central American immigrants attempting to escape conditions in their countries that have only worsened as the Trump administration signals to the world’s dictators that they’re free to abuse human rights.
The increase in immigrants moving through Mexico from Central America also aligns with the decay of relations between the Trump administration and Mexico. Put shortly, it seems Mexico is less motivated to stem the flow flollowing Trump’s economic and verbal war on their country. And of course, it only makes sense as a retaliatory tactic.
The bottom line, no matter your view of Trump politically, is that his approach to immigration has failed miserably to dissuade refugees from Central America from seeking security in the US. And they’re so desperate to keep American voters from realizing it before the election that they tried child concentration camps as a deterrent. In fact, after reaping the lagging benefit of Obama’s immigration legacy in 2017, the numbers now show a very different policy of failure. Trump’s broad and emphatic embrace of dictatorship and human rights abuse has only increased the number of refugees the US must now deal with. And his terrible relationship with Mexico means we’re no longer getting as much help there either.
For people who want to see fewer refugees at our Southern border, the only affective approach in the short term would be the impeachment of Donald Trump and a return to proper patriotic American traditions. The numbers don’t lie, even though our fake president does. And his administration is desperately hoping nobody notices and connects these dots.