Number of migrants seeking U.S. entry surges

Migrant shelters along the southern border are filling up again. Immigration lawyers in the region say their caseloads are spiking. Across the Southwest, border officers are stopping more than 1,000 people a day.

Just months after border apprehensions hit a 17-year low, which administration officials proudly celebrated as a “Trump effect,” the number of migrants trying to enter the United States has been surging, surpassing 40,000 along the Southwest border last month, more than double the springtime numbers, according to new data from the Homeland Security Department.

Many factors, including the Central American economy and gang violence, play a role in migration patterns. But it also appears that any deterrent effect of President Donald Trump’s tough talk and ramped-up immigration enforcement has begun to wane.

In interviews, volunteers and lawyers along the border say that migrants and smugglers have stopped lying low, deciding that trying to get a foothold in a well-off and safe country was no riskier than in the past.

“I think this was a ‘Let’s wait and see what’s going to happen’ period,” said Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House, a shelter in El Paso that provides housing to recent border crossers as they search for more permanent places to live.

Garcia pointed to the president’s plan to hire tens of thousands of border agents, which was announced in February but has yet to come to fruition because Congress still has not provided the funding. The same is true for Trump’s centerpiece project, the border wall.