Historic number of minors are crossing border in Yuma area

Border Patrol apprehensions in Arizona rose in May despite the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy aimed at deterring illegal immigration.

In the Yuma area, the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended by the Border Patrol in May hit a record high.

But U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials pointed to a sharp decline in the number of families entering the country illegally in the Yuma area as a sign that the “zero tolerance” policy is working.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called attention to the wave of families arriving there when she visited the Yuma area in April.

Apprehensions — a reliable measure of migration patterns — declined in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which stretches over Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise Counties, according to the latest statistics from Customs and Border Protection.

However, those decreases were offset by a larger jump in the number of apprehensions along the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector, which covers Yuma County and California’s Imperial Sand Dunes.

The increase along southwestern Arizona’s border was driven by an unprecedented 139 percent spike in unaccompanied minors that crossed through the area in May.

The surge in unaccompanied minors reached the highest level recorded in Yuma since the government began tracking that data in 2010.

Still, the “zero tolerance” policy at the border that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in April appeared to be having an effect. Under the policy, any adult migrant caught crossing the border illegally is referred for criminal prosecution. As a result, agents now separate children detained with their parents and transfer them to government custody while the parent is prosecuted.

For months, the Yuma Sector had become the second-busiest illegal entry point for migrant families along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. However, the latest figures from CBP show that the number of families that crossed the border in that area dropped almost by half.

Border Patrol officials in Yuma declined to comment on this drastic reversal in minors and family apprehensions. Although they said it was tied to the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, they deferred all comment to officials at CBP’s headquarters in Washington.

CBP officials did not respond to requests for comment. The agency also has not released the number of family separations that took place this month along Arizona’s portion of the border.

The record surge of unaccompanied minors arriving at the Yuma border had been building for years. The numbers have risen steadily since the Border Patrol began tracking them in 2010. That year, agents detained 216 minors.

Over the next few years, few unaccompanied minors crossed the border through Yuma, even as an unexpected surge in 2014 overwhelmed Border Patrol agents elsewhere, especially in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

In early 2016, the monthly number of detained minors topped 100 for the first time. It proceeded to seesaw up and down, peaking in November 2016 and December 2017 at more than 500.

CBP’s latest statistics show that agents in Yuma apprehended 1,080 unaccompanied minors in May. That’s an average of 35 each day along the sector’s 126-mile-long border with Mexico.

By comparison, agents in April detained 451 minors, less than half of May’s total.

In March, Justin Kallinger, a Yuma Border Patrol spokesman, said authorities were unsure why minors were crossing the border through Yuma. But he added that agents were prepared in case the number of unaccompanied minors they detained continued going up.

“We put together a team of agents, and that’s what they do,” he said. “They transport, they process and they work hand-in-hand with these groups to make sure that it’s almost streamlined, that we’re making sure that every single person gets the same, adequate amount of help or food or whatever they may need.”

Despite the surge in Yuma, southern Texas remains the region where border agents are most likely to encounter minors. The numbers there have begun to reach the highest point in over a year, though they’re still below 2014 levels.

The El Paso Sector also saw a very dramatic spike in the number of unaccompanied minors agents apprehended. In the Tucson Sector, the numbers dropped slightly from April to May.

The federal government has not released the number of children that have been separated from their children since the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy took effect in April.

Sessions has made it clear the policy’s purpose for prosecuting parents is to deter more people from crossing the border illegally.

“We’ve got to get this message out,” he said in a radio interview last week. “You’re not given immunity . ... And if you bring children, you’ll still be prosecuted.”

However, Border Patrol’s statistics show that families, most of them from Central America, may not necessarily be heeding this warning. Family units — the term the agency uses to refer to the number of related adults and minors apprehended together — decreased only slightly along the U.S.-Mexico border.