Thread by @SimonWDC

There is a lot of good data out there about what's happening at the border right if people want to look for it.

What follows is a short thread linking to data from @pewresearch. (1/x).

"The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, the tenth consecutive month of increased apprehensions and a return to levels last seen in mid-2019."

Yes, 2019 levels, like when Trump was President (2/x).
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…

If border apprehensions remain at 100k a month this year for the whole year, 2021 would be an average year in the years of heavy migrant flows, the mid 1980s through 2007 or so.

This is not new, and we have far more border agents today (3/x).

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016…

What is just undeniable, is that flows to the US border started coming down in the late Bush years, stayed very low under Obama, and only started climbing again to current levels under Trump.

This is a situation Biden clearly inherited (4/x).

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019…

The total # of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border in Feb was 10,000 kids. This is not a # that should be causing the kind of freakout we are experiencing right now.

Almost everyone else is being expelled (5/x).

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…

The biggest surprise in the data is the big increase in attempts by Mexicans to cross into America. This is something we have not seen in over a decade.

Does anyone have a sense of why this is?

(Mexicans are much easier to return than Central Americans btw) (6/x).

The point - migrant flows we're seeing now have been seen before in recent US history. Flows like this occurred every year for 2 decades. We saw a big uptick of kids in 2013-2014, and Trump saw a huge increase in 2019.

While hard, this can be managed.

ndn.org/blog/2021/03/l…