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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) set a record for the number of encounters of people at the southern border in December 2021.
The total number for the month of December, 178,840, is an all-time high for December since the agency first started keeping track of southern border arrests in 2000.
“The dedicated men and women at CBP are committed to ensuring dangerous drugs and counterfeit products are off the streets, our communities are kept safe and our borders are secured,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a recent release.
Data released by the CBP shows 518,360 encounters since fiscal year 2022 began in October 2021, already higher than the 458,088 encounters reported in all of 2020.
The second-highest total for December came in the year prior, when approximately 73,994 were apprehended by CBP. Prior to that, the next highest total came back in December of 2000 when 71,252 were apprehended, data reports.
In November of 2021, a similar pattern was evident. CBP shows the organization arrested 174,744 people at the southern border in that month, the highest number for that month since 76,000 were arrested in 2000.
While border encounters reach monthly highs, the number of family units crossing the border increased by 15% from November 2021 to December 2021, totaling nearly 52,000 in the final month of last year.
“The large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a higher-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts, which means that total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border,” CBP said in their December 2021 Monthly Operational Update.
According to the release, CBP officials encountered an average 5,769 individuals a day at the Southwest border in December 2020, a slight decrease from the November 2021 daily average.
Encounters of unaccompanied children decreased 14%, with 11,921 encounters in December compared with 13,937 in November.
According to research published in 2019, Houston was one of the largest destinations for migrants once they entered the United States from the period of 2007 through 2016. Houston ranked third overall on the list, with Dallas and Austin ranking fourth and 19th, respectively, based on estimated population as of 2016.