US Customs and Border Protection reports November southwest border apprehensions at 165,783, up nearly 7,000 from the prior month. This is the largest increase for November in the historical record; in fact, apprehensions have ordinarily declined in November over the last twenty years. The trend is clearly headed in the wrong direction.

Our year-end forecast is revised up 70,000 to 1.92 million. We anticipate southwest border apprehensions for calendar year 2021 will set an annual record by a very large margin, coming in almost 300,000 above the next highest year, 1986, when 1.6 million apprehensions were recorded.