Immigration live: Biden announces action to curb migrant crossings at US-Mexico border

The immigration issue is a growing threat to US President Joe Biden’s
re-election hopes.

Along with the economy, it is a dominant concern for voters in most
polls – and the vast majority disapproves of Biden’s handing of it.

Driven by growing conflict or instability in their home countries and
drawn by the post-pandemic jobs gap in the US, immigrants have crossed the
southern border at unprecedented numbers over the last three years.

Those numbers began to rise in 2018, as Central Americans fled a series
of complex crises, and then fell drastically in 2020 thanks to pandemic-era
restrictions. They began climbing again starting in 2021.

More than 6.4 million migrants have been detained while crossing into
the US illegally during the Biden administration. Many of them are released
into the United States to await processing, which sometimes takes years.

In 2023 US Custom and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a record high of
nearly 2.5 million “encounters” at the southern border – with 302,000
of them in December alone.

Since then, migrant arrivals have plummeted, with recently released CBP
statistics showing there were only about 179,000 migrant “encounters”
recorded in April.

Experts warn, however, that this slower rate is not sustainable.