(CNN) — There is an important detail that is being left out of many conversations about the growing number of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border.
Decades ago, the vast majority of migrants trying to cross the border between ports of entry were Mexican. A few years ago, the majority came from the Central American countries known as the Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But now, according to Border Patrol statistics, the number of people coming from outside those places is growing, and fast.
David Bier calls it a “sea change” and a “new phenomenon that no one talks about.” Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, noted this change in a recent thread on twitter. It’s a revealing detail, he says, that lays bare a lot about what the Biden administration is facing at the border, and why the situation has been so difficult to resolve.
To better understand this trend, CNN dove into the data. Here’s a look at what we’ve recorded, why this change is so significant, why it’s happening, what this looks like on the ground, and what could happen next.
Our analysis: there is a big change in who is coming to the US-Mexico border. Large numbers of migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle continue to make the journey. But the number of migrants from other countries, represented here in purple, has increased significantly.
In 2007, the number of migrants in this “other” category was negligible. But since then, it has grown spectacularly, by 11,000%, with the largest increase in the last two years.
US Border Patrol encounters continue to show more migrants from Mexico attempting to cross the Southwest border in July than from any other single country. But so far this fiscal year, for the first time, encounters with migrants from outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle are outpacing encounters with migrants from either of those regions.
A handful of countries make up a large part of this growing group on the border. The number of times US Border Patrol agents on the southwest border have encountered migrants from Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela has increased dramatically in the last two years.
A word of warning: For this analysis, we used U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics on Border Patrol encounters, which include both migrants being apprehended and detained, less temporarily, at the border, such as migrants who are immediately expelled to their countries of origin and to Mexico. This data gives us the best overall picture of who is arriving and what is happening at the border.
But officials have acknowledged that the numbers may be inflated, because they include some migrants who were returned under the government’s public health policy. “Title 42”and then tried to cross again.
In other words, the same people may have been counted multiple times.
This is a problem that particularly affects migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle, who are more likely to be subjected to Title 42 restrictions than migrants from other countries.
Because it is important: Doris Meissner, who directs US immigration policy work at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, says the rise of additional nationalities at the border “makes policy enforcement at the border be even more complicated.”
For decades, many border policies have been designed with Mexican migrants in mind, he says, but it is much more difficult to deport people to other countries. For example, Title 42 limits the nationalities that can be removed and returned to their countries of origin. And cold diplomatic relations can also affect deportations.
“These populations … require different types of responses,” says Meissner. “We have not established an asylum system that is in any way up to the challenge of this change.”
Administration officials say they are working hard to address the root causes of migration. And President Joe Biden has described him as a “hemispheric challenge”.
But Bier says officials aren’t doing enough.
“The Biden Administration cannot respond to this new reality with the same old playbook,” he said on Twitter. Bier told CNN that’s exactly what the administration appears to be doing. “It’s a lot of the same kinds of responses,” he says.
Why is it happening: there is no simple reason for this to happen, says Bier.
“There are as many answers,” he says, “as there are countries represented in that group.”
CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus recently told CBS News that it is impossible to point out all the factors that drive migrants to make the trip, given the complexity of the situation in their countries of origin. “It’s a very complex set of dynamics,” he said.
Meissner, who was a commissioner for the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000, says the pandemic has played a major role in intensifying economic pressures.
There are also other factors at play. According to Meissner, the increase in Cubans heading to the United States can be attributed in part to a new air route between Cuba and Nicaragua. CNN’s Patrick Oppmann reported that after Nicaragua removed visa requirements for Cubans, people began posting ads on the Internet selling their homes with “everything in it” to pay for expensive plane tickets.
Deteriorating economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care are increasingly pushing Venezuelans to leave, and the growing Venezuelan community in the United States is also a draw, says Meissner.
For Colombians and Nicaraguans, economic instability, exacerbated by the pandemic, has been the main driver of migration, he says, but politics also play a role.
“Increased repression under the Ortega regime, especially during the recent presidential elections, has cemented the belief among many Nicaraguans that the country’s political turmoil will not be resolved anytime soon,” says Meissner.
And those who previously viewed neighboring Costa Rica as a destination, he says, are more likely to look elsewhere because of diminishing job prospects there.
The rise in inflation and unemployment in Colombia they are driving migration, says Meissner. Social unrest following the 2021 wave of protests and political divisions that intensified during the recent presidential election may also influence migrant decisions, she says.
What this looks like on the ground: this is not just something we can see with statistics. Both migrants and Border Patrol officials say they are noticing the change.
Yuma Border Patrol Sector Chief Chris Clem told CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez last month that the sheer number of nationalities crossing the border was testing his agents.
“The countries that we are receiving now, those nationalities are flying in, coming to the border, and they are having to be processed and there are so many of them that it is posing a challenge to the workforce,” he said.
Speaking to CNN earlier this year, a cuban immigrant He described a house in the Mexican desert where he waited with others to cross the border.
One room was full of Cubans, he said. And another was full of people from different countries.
“There were Colombians, Bangladeshis, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians,” he said. “It seemed like the whole world was there.”
What could happen next: Like everything border-related, there’s a lot of debate about what officials should do about it.
Biden administration officials have repeatedly stressed that the border is not open. But those who favor increasing immigration restrictions argue that the administration’s policies have incentivized more people to try their luck crossing the border illegally. Some, including more than 50% of Republicans, according to a recent NPR-Ipsos poll, say they believe it is entirely true that “the United States is experiencing an invasion on the southern border.” And some Republican candidates are insisting on this message on the eve of the midterm elections, promising they will do more if elected to crack down on illegal immigration.
Bier and Meissner say the changing composition of immigrants at the border shows that the US immigration system is in need of an overhaul.
“Many, if not most, of these people are not eligible for asylum, even though they are fleeing very difficult conditions,” says Meissner. “We desperately need Congress to address immigration laws and make possible other legal avenues to come to the United States.”
And countries in the Western Hemisphere must work together and address migration as a shared responsibility, he says.
At the moment, there are no signs that this trend is slowing down. And Bier and Meissner say they don’t expect it to.
“It’s totally plausible to think that this could go on for many years,” says Bier, “because we don’t have the infrastructure to push people out as quickly as they arrive.”