U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is on track to apprehend nearly 1 million migrants entering the country illegally in 2019, which would be the highest number since 2006.
CBP has arrested 306,682 migrants at the border so far this year and will reach 931,000 by the end of the year, according to an analysis of the numbers by Princeton Policy Advisors. The expected total of apprehensions is about twice as many as were arrested in 2018 and almost four times as many as were arrested in 2017.
Nearly 99,000 migrants were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border after entering illegally last month, up from close to 93,000 in March. Arrests tend to spike during the warmer months when it becomes easier for migrants, the majority fleeing poverty and violence in Central American countries, to make the long and dangerous journey north to the border.
The Trump administration has been forced to release tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in family units into the U.S. because of limited resources to keep them detained. The influx of migrants since the beginning of the year has prompted the administration to take extraordinary measures to deal with what authorities are treating as a crisis. The White House asked Congress last week for $4.5 billion in emergency funds for border operations after the White House Budget Office warned that the Office of Refugee Resettlement and other programs are at risk of running out of money by the beginning of the summer.