PHOENIX — Title 42 is a law allowing the government to turn away migrants from countries with communicable disease outbreaks.
It was invoked by former President Donald Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are the numbers behind it:
First, looking at total encounters at the southwestern border.
Data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection released monthly statistics by a fiscal year that ends in September.
For the 2022 fiscal year, encounters were the highest on record, with about 2.4 million migrants. So far encounters are not slowing down.
The most recent data for October reports about 230,000 migrant encounters, 75% of annual encounters in the fiscal year 2017.
Since title 42 was invoked there have been 4.5 million migrant encounters on the entire southwestern border.
More than half of the encounters are flagged by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as Title 42.
It is trending down even as monthly encounters remain high.
In 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 90% of encounters at the border were Title 42. The monthly record was set in May of this year with over 240,000 encounters. 42% of those were Title 42. In October the number dropped to 34%.
Trends are similar in Arizona.
Since Title 42 went into effect there have been 975,000 encounters on Arizona’s border, 459,000 of which were under Title 42, 47%.
However, in Arizona’s case, it’s less of a trend and more of a drop in enforcement.
Like U.S. numbers, 90% of encounters were Title 42 in the spring of 2020.
Arizona’s peak encounter month was also May of this year and Title 42 accounted for 40% of them.
The following month shows a drop in total encounters and an even steeper drop in Title 42. Since then, they have risen to 35% of encounters this past October.
About 90% of migrants encountered at Arizona’s border under Title 42 hold citizenship in a Central American country.
Three out of four migrants are from Mexico, 14% hold Guatemalan citizenship and 2.5% are Honduran citizens. Colombians make up 4% of Title 42 encounters in Arizona and citizens from all other countries makeup 6%.
Since September of 2021, encounters with migrants from Non-Central American countries are the majority at Arizona’s border.
