The Associated Press reports that since 2009, requests for asylum in the United States have nearly quadrupled, in large part due to a surge in requests from Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan immigrants.
The surge has come predominantly from asylum requests made in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, which is now the busiest Border Patrol sector along the Mexican border in terms of illegal border crossings. Surprisingly, more than half of those crossings were by non-Mexicans, primarily Central Americans, the AP reports.
From the AP's story:
According to draft testimony for (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) Associate Director Joseph Langlois that was to be submitted for a congressional hearing on asylum requests last month, UCSIS received more than 19,119 asylum requests through the end of May. The agency anticipates receiving more than 28,600 by the end of the fiscal year. According to the testimony, during the 2009 budget year the agency received just 5,369 such requests.
Also from the story:
Langlois attributed the spike in asylum requests from Central Americans to reports of increased drug trafficking, violence and overall rising crime in those countries.