U.S. border officials have had more than 2 million encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border this year, setting a new record after recent surges in migration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reports Axios. in 2020, the pandemic saw slowed traffic at the border. Officials took roughly 460,000 migrants into custody over the fiscal year. However, that number jumped to 1.7 million in 2021. With one month left of the fiscal year in 2022, the total passed two million for the first time ever. The large border numbers over the past two years have likely been aided due to multiple attempts of people crossing the border and being sent back under Title 42, a public policy that was implemented at the start of the pandemic.
In August, CBP reported more than 200,000 encounters at the border, and 55,333 of those involved people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. This accounted for more than one-third of the individuals taken into custody in August 2022, a 175 percent increase from August 2021. CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said, "Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border."