New Details on Border Patrol Arrests

Newly released case-by-case data on Border Patrol apprehensions, current through April 2018, allow a first-time, in-depth look at many aspects of what has been happening along the southwest border.

These arrest-by-arrest internal Border Patrol records track when and where individuals, including families and unaccompanied children, were picked up by the Border Patrol and how their individual cases have been handled. Data on who was referred for criminal prosecution is also included. While individual records on each adult and child were released, some vital questions – including which children have been separated from their parents – cannot yet be answered as the agency claims that much additional information sought was not found in a search of their internal database.

These Border Patrol records cover the period from October 2014 through April 2018 and were obtained after a lengthy FOIA campaign by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

Following are selected highlights from this latest data.

Border Patrol Arrests of Families and Children Are Lower.

Most Persons Arrested Quickly Deported.

How Old Are Children Arrested by the Border Patrol? Few unaccompanied children arrive who are very young, although a small number are brought by older siblings. So far this fiscal year, only 3 percent of unaccompanied children arrested by the Border Patrol were 3 or younger. The majority were 16 or 17 years of age, with 26.8 percent who were 16 and 37.4 percent who were 17.

In sharp contrast, children arriving as part of a family unit tended to be quite young. As of April 2018, over half (51.2%) of the children arrested with parents this fiscal year were only 7 years of age or younger. Nearly a quarter (22.9%) were three or younger. Only 5 percent were as old as 17.

Criminal Prosecutions. Criminal prosecutions of parents arrested with children have been extremely rare in the past. Even after April 6, 2018 when the Attorney General announced a new zero-tolerance policy for criminal illegal entry and the Administration explained that separation of children from parents was necessitated due to the criminal prosecution of their parents, these data indicate little change occurred. Indeed, the data show that only one adult member of a family unit was actually referred for criminal prosecution during all of April 2018!

KJ