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Causes.com
| 3.18.22

CBP Apprehended 164K Unauthorized Immigrants at the Southern Border in February

Are you concerned about the rate at which people are attempting to enter the country illegally?

What’s the story?

  • Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data this week revealing that apprehensions of people entering the U.S. illegally at the Southern border in February continued at a record-setting pace that has fiscal year 2022 on track to double the all-time record set in fiscal year 2021.
  • CBP apprehended 164,973 people at the Southern border in February ― a significant increase over the 101,099 who were apprehended in February 2021. These figures exclude the number of “gotaways” whom CBP was unable to detain or who entered the U.S. undetected.
  • Over the first five months of FY022, CBP has encountered 838,685 people attempting to enter the country illegally. That’s more than double the 397,549 apprehended in the first five months of FY2021. February was the 13th consecutive month with at least 101,000 apprehensions at the Southern border.
  • The number of unaccompanied minors apprehended in February was 12,011 ― an increase from 8,760 in January that brings the total for the first five months of FY2022 to 59,368. If the current pace continues for the rest of FY2022, it would approach the all-time record total of unaccompanied minors apprehended in a fiscal year, which was 146,925 in FY2021.
  • The CBP chart below shows the total number of monthly border apprehensions from the current fiscal year, which currently has five complete months of data, compared to monthly totals from the three preceding fiscal years:

  • Nearly all of the CBP sectors at the Southern border saw an increase in the number of monthly apprehensions in February 2022 compared to a year ago. Yuma saw the largest relative increase from 5,128 in February 2021 to 20,329 in February 2022 ― a 296.4% spike. Del Rio experienced the largest increase in absolute terms with a year-over-year increase of 19,386 from 11,094 in February 2021 to 30,480 in February 2022. Only one sector saw a decline in February 2022 compared to a year ago: Big Bend went from 3,096 to 3,007 (-2.9%).
  • According to CBP’s latest figures for the Southern border, the agency has conducted life-saving search and rescue efforts 6,630 times in FY2022 to date and 1,232 of those occurred in February. The current pace would eclipse the 12,833 search and rescue missions performed by CBP at the Southern border in FY2021.


— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: CBP Office of Public Affairs photo by Kris Grogan via Flickr / Public Domain)