Mexican authorities detained 252,256 migrants from January to November of 2021, breaking the country’s yearly record for migrant detentions.
The statistics, released this month by Mexico’s interior secretary, show a 206 percent increase in migrant detentions from the 82,379 migrants detained in 2020.
The detention numbers from 2020 are an outlier, as the coronavirus pandemic slowed regional migration.
Still, the 2021 report, pending figures from December, shows the largest number of migrant detentions since 2001, the first year when Mexican migration statistics became available.
Detentions of migrants in Mexico were on the rise in the years preceding the pandemic, with 182,940 detentions in 2019, 131,445 in 2018 and 93,846 in 2017.
The numbers correlate closely on a month-to-month basis with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics of detentions at the U.S.-Mexico border since 2017, although U.S. statistics include Mexican migrants in addition to those from other countries.
Mexico’s quarter-million migrant detentions pale in comparison to the U.S. border detention figures — in calendar year 2021 through November, CBP reported more than 1.8 million migrant encounters.
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