More border crossers move in big clusters

SANDIEGO— Central Americans are increasingly entering the United States illegally in groups of at least 100 people along rugged, remote stretches of the Mexico border, authorities said Friday upon releasing January figures that show total arrests fell for a second straight month.

A group of 325 Central Americans surrendered to agents Thursday near Lukeville, Arizona, according to Customs and Border Protection. Migrants told authorities that buses and trucks dropped them off throughout the night on a Mexican highway that runs parallel to the border, and they entered the U.S. together to wait for agents to find them. There were nearly 150 children, including 32 who were traveling alone.

The Border Patrol has encountered groups of at least 100 people 60 times since Oct. 1, compared with 13 during the entire 2018 fiscal year and two in the 2017 fiscal year, officials said.

It is unclear what’s driving the sudden uptick of large groups in remote areas. Families, many of them Central American asylum seekers, make up a large and growing percentage of arrests across the border.

U.S. authorities arrested or stopped people for immigration violations 58,207 times in January, down 4 percent from 60,779 in December but up 62 percent from 35,905 in January 2018. It was the second straight monthly decline, though arrests typically fall from December to January.

Families and children traveling alone accounted for 33,861 of those encounters, or nearly 6 of every 10 stopped at official crossings or arrested for entering the country illegally between crossings, mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. That’s a dramatic change from several years ago, when most people who crossed illegally were single Mexican adults.