For the first time on record, Border Patrol agents in 2014 took more non-Mexicans into custody along the U.S. southern border than Mexicans, a new analysis shows.
The
study by the Pew Research Center, which analyzed 60 years of Border Patrol data, found about 229,000 Mexicans were apprehended at the border in fiscal 2014 compared with some 257,000 non-Mexicans.
The total of both groups represented a 16 percent increase from 2013.
"The new Border Patrol apprehensions data reflect a broader ongoing shift in the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population that was shaped by a migration wave from Mexico that lasted from the 1980s until the Great Recession," the researchers say.
Though Mexico remains the top country of origin for the nation’s unauthorized immigrants, their numbers have declined since 2007, when about 809,000 Mexicans were taken into custody and 68,000 non-Mexicans were apprehended, the analysis shows.
The number of Mexican immigrants apprehended at the border peaked at 1.6 million in 2000.
The increase in non-Mexicans over the last year was attributed to last summer's surge in unaccompanied Central American child migrants, the researchers note.
In fiscal year 2014, nearly 52,000 unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were captured at the U.S.–Mexico border, more than double from the previous year, Pew reports, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Though their numbers are declining, Mexicans still make up about 52 percent of the undocumented immigrants. And, the researchers say, they are staying.
In 2013, unauthorized immigrant adults had been in the United States for a median of 13 years, up from eight years a decade earlier.
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