For the second month in a row, the number of encounters with migrants reported by the Border Patrolβs Tucson Sector dropped slightly, federal data released Friday show.
In the Tucson Sector, agents reported about 18,400 encounters, down from about 19,900 in May, in the Customs and Border Protection data.
Yuma Sector agents reported about 12,400 encounters in June, up slightly from about 12,200 in May.
Along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, CBP officials reported about 188,800 encounters in June, up from about 180,600 in May.
Border encounters refer to migrants apprehended while trying to cross the border clandestinely, along with those who flag down officials to ask for asylum. Border encounters started rising last summer and then spiked in January, when President Biden took office.
The vast majority of border encounters in June involved Border Patrol agents, who work in remote areas between ports of entry, as well as at highway checkpoints.
Agents reported about 178,400 encounters in June, up from 172,600 in May. The Office of Field Operations, which runs legal ports of entry, reported about 10,400 encounters in June, up from 8,000 in May.
The busiest area for migration remains the Border Patrolβs Rio Grande Valley Sector on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. Officials there reported about 59,400 encounters in June, up from about 51,100 in May.
As has been the pattern in recent months, most of the migrants encountered in the Tucson Sector were adults from Mexico and Guatemala traveling without children.
The demographics are more complex in the Yuma Sector, which sees more families than single adults.
In the Yuma Sector, the most common demographics included families from Brazil, who accounted for 3,600 encounters, as well as about 1,200 encounters with single adults from Mexico, 950 encounters with family members from Ecuador, 800 encounters with adults from Cuba, and about 600 adults each from Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Quick expulsions
The majority of the encounters in June led to quick expulsions to Mexico under Title 42, a public health order the Trump administration started using when the pandemic began.
The Biden administration continues to use the order, which allows officials to expel migrants within hours of encountering them, rather than process them under immigration laws. Title 42 is used most often with adults from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras traveling without children.
In June, Border Patrol officials reported 103,000 expulsions. Another 75,400 encounters led to migrants being processed under immigration laws.
In the Tucson Sector, officials reported about 14,900 expulsions in June and about 3,500 migrants processed under immigration laws. In the Yuma Sector, officials reported about 2,400 expulsions and about 10,000 migrants processed under immigration laws.
Biden officials reportedly are planning to start unwinding Title 42 in the coming weeks.
Repeat crossers
Due to Title 42, the number of migrants encountered multiple times has been much higher than in the past.
In June, 34% of encounters involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months. From 2014 to 2019, the average was 14%, CBP officials said Friday.
A lingering question in recent months has been how many individual migrants have been encountered at the border, rather than the number of times officials have encountered migrants. Fridayβs news release for the first time provided an answer to that question.
In June, the number of unique individuals encountered along the border was about 123,800, out of 188,800 encounters, according to CBP officials.
Since October, the number of unique individuals was 454,944, out of 1.1 million encounters.
CBP officials on Friday said the number of individuals encountered since October was less than in the same period in 2019, when 489,760 unique individuals were encountered. Previously released data shows about 780,500 apprehensions during the first nine months of fiscal 2019.
CBP officials in Arizona said on Friday they did not have statistics about unique individuals encountered in the Tucson and Yuma sectors.
Data for July likely will be released in the first or second week of August.
Record numbers of Venezuelans are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as overall migration swells.
