Chart of the Day: YTD Border Apprehensions

I haven’t put this up for a few months, and this seems like an appropriate time for an update. Here’s the latest from the Border Patrol for illegal border crossings through September:

This year looks pretty normal to me. Apprehensions are way lower than they were a decade ago (nearly a million through September) and about the same as they’ve been every year since 2011. We’ll end up the year at around 400,000, which means that the big, mean caravan from Honduras—most of which won’t cross the border anyway—amounts to maybe one percent of our usual yearly total. It’s an obvious nothingburger being milked for political demagoguery, and nothing more.

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