A Long View of Migration Across the Southwest Border

A long view of "illegal alien apprehensions recorded by the U.S. Border Patrol clearly indicates that crossings of the border from Mexico into the United States rose steadily since the 1960s. After peaking at more than 1.6 million in 2000, the numbers fell sharply and are now on the level of the early 1970s. While last year approximately 304,000 people were apprehended, this fiscal year has so far seen just over a quarter of a million apprehensions from October 2017 until the end of May 2018.