Kids’ Border Surge Expected to Last 7+ Months

The Biden administration projects the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border could spiral from more than 16,000 this month to as many as 26,000 in September, according to documents leaked to Axios.

Why it matters: Until this month, the record was 11,475 in May 2019. The minimum projections for each of the next six months are thousands higher than that.

• To give a sense of how out of hand the crossings are getting, the administration projected just a month ago the figure for May would be 13,000. The new estimate is 22,000 to 25,000.
• The Customs and Border Protection range for September is 22,000 to 26,000. {snip}

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• No more than 8,230 kids were put in shelters each year from 2004 to 2009, before a rise in child migration was first noticed in 2011, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
• Now, the government is planning for multiple months with more than 20,000 kids illegally crossing the border — and that’s not including those from Mexico, who can quickly be returned to their home country.

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The big picture: Under current policies, the government is facing unheard of numbers of migrant kids illegally crossing the border this fiscal year — from 159,000 to 184,000.

• Even the low-end estimate is double the total number of kids who tried to cross during the crisis year of 2019. In 2014, the Obama administration struggled to care for just 69,000 kids who crossed illegally.
• The data obtained by Axios did not include projections for migrant families, but the Department of Homeland Security is expecting from 500,000 to 800,000 migrants crossing the border this fiscal year in family groups, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

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