Despite the measures taken to deter immigration, the Colombian avalanche, who came to the southern border of the USA with the intention of staying in this country, albeit illegally, continues.
This week, the US Customs and Border Control Office (CBP) released its statistics for March, and they are alarming.
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Between the 1st and the 31st of last month, authorities detained 15,144 Colombians who were trying to enter this country illegally or who had applied for asylum at the time of their arrest.
This represents a 58 percent increase from the previous month (9,600), which was already a record in recent history and tripled the numbers (3,911 arrests) for January.
To put it in context, so far in fiscal 2022 (starting in October 2021) the US has detained about 40,000 Colombians.
This represents a 545 percent increase in these 6 months compared to all illegal immigration that occurred in fiscal year 2021 (6,200 arrests).
If you look by month and take the initial data from CBP (October 2019), the increase was 36,000 percent: from 41 encounters that month to 15,144 last month.
The massive immigration to the southern border has caused such concern among US authorities that they signed a deal with Colombia last month. deported citizens through controversial Title 42, which allowed them to openly remove people and without the proper immigration process, which claims that the covid-19 pandemic has created a health emergency in the country.
Since then, in this way, more than 2,000 Colombians have been deported from the United States and returned on Washington-funded charter flights.
According to the sources cited by this newspaper, 20 such flights have taken place since last month.
However, President Joe Biden’s administration announced the end of Title 42 enforcement as of May 23; this will show that from next month immigration may increase rather than decrease.
According to several organizations that monitor this situation, including Wola, there are several factors that may cause Colombians to immigrate to the United States.
These include the economic difficulties this two-year pandemic has left in the country, Biden’s arrival as president – what many understand as an invitation to emigrate after the four-year lockdown imposed by Donald Trump’s previous administration. Democrat deporting immigrants at record levels – and not having a visa to enter Mexico, a country where they first arrived by air and then tried to cross the border.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERİ
THE TIME Correspondent
Washington
On Twitter: @sergom68
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