Border Patrol Arrests of Families and Children Are Lower

Via Syracuse University's TRAC:

While there is a distinct month-to-month seasonality in the number of families and unaccompanied children picked up by the Border Patrol attempting to enter the country between official ports of entry, there is nothing particularly unusual about the number that have been arrested so far this year.

Because the age of each individual is recorded in these detailed data, it is now possible to separately track the number of adults arriving with children over the past three and a half years. While numbers have increased in recent months, they are far from reaching record levels. A time series graph displaying the number of adults arriving with children is shown in Figure 1.

In fact, the number of adults apprehended with children so far during FY 2018 (23,162) is still 14.5 percent lower than the number of adults arrested with children during the same seven-month period in FY 2017 (27,080). The number of unaccompanied children arrested by the Border Patrol this year is also down as compared with the same period during FY 2017.
Further, in April 2018, the same month that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the "zero tolerance" enforcement policy in response to the alleged crisis on the border, there were a total of 4,537 adults arriving with children, a relatively small number compared to the 24,876 adults arrested without children that same month.


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