US illegal border crossings up in May

MORE than 50,000 people were arrested on the US-Mexico border for the third month in a row in May, indicating the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” crackdown has failed to stem illegal immigration, official data showed yesterday.

Despite President Donald Trump’s order in early May to begin arresting all illegal border crossers and separate children from their parents, arrests at the border were up 160 percent over a year earlier and slightly higher from April.

The data showed that families and unaccompanied children continued to flood the border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where persistent violence has encouraged many to seek asylum in the US.

The numbers indicate

high level of people

a successfully sneaking into the country, though it was not clear if they also point to more successful interdictions after an expansion of policing with the addition of National Guard troops beginning in April.

“We are seeing family units try to illegally cross our borders at staggering rates,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Houlton.

Trump was reportedly deeply angered in May when border apprehension data showed a rebound in illegal immigration after a sharp fall for his first eight months in office in 2017.

Trump had credited that fall to the success of his administration’s policies, after having promised during his election campaign to halt illegal immigration.