Migrant crossing increases are not new. Why is the border overwhelmed?

Follow our live updates about the end of title 42.

President Biden’s tenure coincided with a global increase in migration, and the pressure was acute on the United States’ southern border. According to the latest available data, between February 2021 and March this year, officials caught migrants crossing the border without authorization more than five million times – the highest number of arrests in decades.

Officials are bracing for a bigger surge after the Biden administration lifted an emergency health rule known as Title 42, which has been used millions of times to quickly deport migrants.

Some 660,000 migrants were waiting in Mexico earlier this month, most likely ready to enter the United States in the coming days and weeks, according to a Homeland Security intelligence analysis obtained by The New York Times. And migrants are still moving north through Central America.

On Tuesday, border officials detained more than 11,000 migrants who had crossed illegally according to internal data, an increase from 7,000 to 8,000 crossings per day last week.

Border Patrol chief Raul L. Ortiz estimated on Wednesday that 60,000 to 65,000 migrants were waiting along Mexico’s northern border.

The border and the US immigration system are not equipped to manage that many people. But entering the United States illegally has become the only option for many, as there are less legal ways.

This is why the border is collapsing under the migratory flows.

Immigration laws are outdated.

The most recent major U.S. laws governing refugees, asylum seekers, and immigration enforcement date back to the 1980s and 1990s. None of them have been significantly updated to adapt to modern challenges.

For example, the limits on visas that allowed people to work in the United States were based on the size of the economy in the 1990s. These limits have largely remained the same, even though the economy has changed since then more than twice as large.

In addition, the facilities built on the border were originally designed to detain Mexican men who crossed illegally in search of work. They resemble jail-like settings where people are crammed into one space. The government has recognized that these facilities are not safe to hold children and other vulnerable populations. Over the past decade, the United States has established additional temporary spaces to meet the needs of families and children, but it is still not enough to cope with the large numbers of people entering the country.

Border enforcement measures were largely aimed at migrants trying to evade capture by authorities, not thousands of people fleeing humanitarian crises who reported to authorities as soon as they reached the border, many hoping to seek asylum to ask.

Congress cannot agree on how the laws should be revised.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been unable to reach a compromise on how to update the outdated laws because of a wider disagreement over who can enter and stay in the United States and for how long. The issue has become so polarizing that members of the same political party differ on what revisions to the law should look like on a number of issues, such as offering respite to migrants in need and adding foreign workers to the US workforce.

Conflicts abroad increase migration.

One of the biggest reasons for the increase in migration is the number of failed and authoritarian states in the Western Hemisphere. Struggling economies worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, humanitarian crises and political unrest have led people to flee their homes for a safer and more stable life in the United States.

For many migrants, including those from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the situation is so hopeless that the risk of making the perilous journey and possibly being rejected by US officials is preferable to continuing to live in squalid conditions.

“Failed states in the Western Hemisphere are the disease,” said Jason Houser, a former top immigration official in the Biden administration. “The flow of migrants to the border, overwhelming our agencies, is the symptom.”

There is no federal plan for released migrants.

When there is a wave of migration, border officials are quickly overwhelmed due to a limited capacity to keep people in custody. Thus, migrants are often released with the expectation that they will report to officials and face their day in immigration court. The federal government has long relied on border communities to provide respite stops and shelter for the migrants. While federal funding has increased over the past year, it’s not enough to meet the needs of nonprofits and local governments.

Tensions are already running high in the border towns. At least eight migrants were killed on Sunday in Brownsville, Texas, after the driver of an SUV plowed into a crowd at a homeless shelter that helps migrants. There were also reports of migrants sleeping on the streets of El Paso because the shelters were full. In an unusual move, the Homeland Security Department on Tuesday ordered border and immigration officials to enter El Paso’s communities to arrest people who had crossed illegally without detection. This operation led to hundreds of migrants turning themselves in to authorities, evacuating some of the busier areas.

The federal government also has no plan to safely transport released migrants to other US cities or provide adequate support for local governments to assist the migrants once they get there. In addition, migrants cannot apply for a work permit in the United States for months. By working legally, they can cover their housing costs and take the pressure off cities.

The system is overloaded every time.

When migrants are released from border detention with instructions to appear in court by a certain date, the large backlog of cases awaiting the courts grows. Lately, court dates are planned years in advance. Many of the migrants entering the United States will join the more than 11 million already in the country with no way to stay permanently.

There are also backlogs with other federal agencies involved in processing legal asylum applications, such as visas and reunification efforts with family members already in the country.