New York Times
By Julia Preston
February 2, 2016
The
number of women and children illegally crossing the southwest border
into the United States dropped sharply in January, the Department of
Homeland Security reported
Tuesday, reversing a surge late last year that Obama administration
officials feared could become a chaotic influx like the one in 2014.
A
65 percent drop from December to January in crossings by families —
mostly women with their children from three violence-torn countries in
Central America — came after
widely publicized raids in the first days of this year in which 121
migrants were arrested for deportation.
The
Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, called the new border figures
“encouraging,” but he said the deportations would continue, clarifying
for the first time since
the raids that he planned more removals.
With
that announcement, Mr. Johnson rebuffed a host of critics who had
called for a halt to raids to deport Central American asylum seekers,
including more than 150 Democratic
lawmakers in Congress. Both Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders
of Vermont, the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination,
have also criticized the raids. Immigration agents had not conducted any
high-profile raids since arrests on Jan.
3.
Mr.
Johnson did not draw any direct connection between the raids and the
steep drop in crossings, but he said a one-month decline “does not mean
we can dial back our border
security efforts.”
Officials
said Mr. Johnson went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with
Representatives Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois and Zoe Lofgren of
California, Democrats who had
demanded an end to the raids, to tell them that the enforcement would
continue.
In
January there were 3,145 apprehensions by the Border Patrol of migrants
in families, down from 8,974 in December. Additionally, agents caught
3,113 children crossing
without parents in January, a 54 percent decrease from 6,786 in
December. Overall apprehensions at the southwest border declined 36
percent from December and were at the lowest levels since January 2015,
according to the figures.
It
was not clear what had caused the drop in the migrant flow. Women held
in detention centers in South Texas said they were fleeing from an
epidemic of killings and extortion
by criminal gangs that had spread even to rural villages, especially in
El Salvador and Honduras.
In
January, the Obama administration announced that it was working with
the United Nations to create a new refugee program for those two
countries and Guatemala, which
would allow migrants to apply in the region without risking a journey
to the United States border. But officials have not announced a
timetable for that effort to begin.
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