Border agents caught about 152,000 illegals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over the last six months, 28% less than the same period last year. Obama administration officials attribute the decline to a stem in the tide of people coming from Central America:
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the administration and governments in Central America were successfully countering the false message that people who made it across would get to stay in the U.S.
The numbers of unaccompanied children caught at the border, 15,627, is down 45% from the same time a year earlier. The totals have fallen dramatically since their peak last June, when a flood of children and families fleeing crime and poverty in Central America provoked a border crisis.
Johnson also credits the investment in increased border security over the last decade:
“The word’s gotten out that it’s now harder than it used to be to cross our southern border,” Johnson said, adding that people were now more reluctant to pay hefty fees to a “coyote,” or smuggler, to take their relatives north. “People risk a failed investment.”
Of course, many would still argue that the southern border remains extremely porous and wide open to illegals.
