Fact check: Are illegal crossings up 800% along the northern U.S. border?
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who represents a geographically large district in the North Country and Adirondack Park, said on Fox News that the number of illegal crossings is 800% higher than it has been in the past.
Posted — UpdatedMigrants crossing into the United States from the southern border get many headlines, but there has also been an increase in crossings at the U.S.-Canada border.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who represents a geographically large district in the North Country and Adirondack Park, said on Fox News that the number of illegal crossings is many times higher than it has been in the past.
We wondered if there has been an increase of 800% in illegal crossings.
Year-over-year increases in illegal crossings have been steady since the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2020, rising from just 365 that year to 1,065 in the next fiscal year, which ended in September 2022. In fiscal year 2023, the number of people encountered at the border jumped to 6,925, representing the largest year-over-year increase so far. However, if current trends continue, 2024 will outpace the jump in 2023. In the first three months of fiscal year 2024, there have been 2,607 crossings, compared with 1,147 during the same period last year.
Within this data, there are different time periods in which to calculate the increase, all yielding different results.
Experts we spoke with found that the increases, while large for the northern border, are small when compared to other places on the northern border, or the southern border, which has many more crossings.
"Percentages can look really big, but the numbers themselves can be quite small," said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
Immigration experts caution that the number of encounters at a border is not the same thing as the number of people who tried to cross, because the same person could try to cross more than once. But Stefanik said crossings, not people.
Are these illegal crossings? Any crossing of the border without prior authorization is an illegal entry, but people have a right to ask for asylum, saying they have a fear of returning to their home country, Putzel-Kavanaugh said. These asylum seekers are released with a charge that they entered illegally. When they ask for asylum, they can defend their charge with the reasons why they are seeking asylum.
Experts attributed the higher migration at the U.S.-Canada border with an increase in migration around the world, Canada’s decision in 2016 to permit Mexicans to fly there without stringent visa requirements, and a subsequent southern movement of these migrants.
Data from the Swanton sector show that the top two countries of origin for migrants crossing there are Mexico and India.
Stefanik’s office did not return a request for comment.
PolitiFact ruling
Stefanik claimed that there has been at some point an 800% increase in illegal crossings in the Swanton sector of the U.S.-Canada border.
Stefanik did not say which time period she was talking about. The increases in unauthorized crossings vary depending on the time period, but there have been increases exceeding 800% at the border. The actual numbers of encounters remain very low compared with crossings at the southern border.
The crossings are illegal, but people seeking asylum can use their status as an asylum seeker as a defense for crossing illegally.
We rate Stefanik’s claim True.
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