Illegal US Border Crossings Aren’t Really Breaking Records

The number of people who are apprehended by US Border Patrol agents or voluntarily surrender to them at or near the border with Mexico has skyrocketed recently, setting records in each of the past three fiscal years — and exceeding last year’s numbers in each of the first four months of the fiscal year that started in October.

This is usually interpreted to mean that illegal immigration is also setting records, but that’s probably not the case.

The problem with the statistics on what the Border Patrol’s parent agency, US Customs and Border Protection, now calls Southwest land border encounters is that they leave out people who successfully evade the agency’s agents. In past decades, these were the majority of illegal border crossers. “Estimates are that only one out of three coming into our country are actually caught,” President Jimmy Carter said in 1977. More precise — albeit still pretty uncertain — Department of Homeland Security estimates of the Southwest border apprehension rate in the 2000s range from 33% (in 2003) to 43% (in 2000 and 2009).