The Changing Face Of US-Bound Migration: Rise In Africans And Asians Moving Through Mexico

*The faces of the undocumented crossing the border with Mexico is changing. There are more immigrants from Asia and Africa traveling to Mexico to make the trek north. VL

By Lorne Matalon, Fronteras Desk (3 minute read)

TONALA, Mexico — The face of migration from Central America and Mexico to the United States appears to be changing. Immigration arrest statistics from Mexico for the first six months of 2016 mirror a rise in detentions in the same timeframe by U.S. border agents of Africans and Asians trying to illegally enter the United States from Mexico along the southwest border.

Citizens of nations such as China, India and Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia in the Horn of Africa are increasingly a part the migrant mosaic moving through Central America and Mexico.

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The increase is sharp between the summer of 2014, when thearrival of unaccompanied Central American children became a political liability for the Obama administration, and 2016. Following the migrant crisis of 2014, Mexico initiated its Programa Frontera Sur, its southern border plan meant to stop migrants at the Mexico-Guatemala border. READ MORE