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EL PASO, Texas, April 26 (UPI) -- About 60,000 fewer immigrants were caught crossing the United States' southern border illegally in the last six months than in the same period of last year, Obama administration officials said. The U.S. Border Patrol caught about 152,000 undocumented immigrants during that time, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said. That's a drop of nearly 30 percent.
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Officials attribute several factors for the decline, but say the primary reason is a substantial drop off in immigrants coming from Central America.
"The word's gotten out that it's now harder than it used to be to cross our southern border," Johnson said, also noting that fewer immigrants are coming because they know they won't be able to stay -- and deduce it's not worth the price to travel north.
The number of unaccompanied children caught at the border saw an even steeper decline -- slightly more than 15,500, a drop of 45 percent.
Two thirds of allundocumented immigrants crossing the southern border are captured in Texas, and about a quarter are apprehended in Arizona. The rest are mostly caught near the Tijuana point of entry in San Ysidro, Calif.
Last summer, immigrants flooded the U.S.-Mexico line trying to escape crime and poverty in Central American nations, officials said, and created a border crisis. Johnson credited the government's efforts in recent years -- like boosting border security and building more than 600 miles of new fence -- as a big factor in the decline.
"Investments in every aspect of border security -- from personnel, to border surveillance technology, to air and marine assets, to fencing -- have more than doubled since the beginning of the last decade, and in some cases more than quadrupled," Johnson said in a report by the Houston Chronicle.
Immigration has been a very difficult issue for President Barack Obama to grapple with during his presidency. Last year, he sidestepped Congress and issued an executive order to provide temporary legal protection to aliens living in the United States illegally -- but it's currently tied up in federal courts.
In February, Obama slammed the Republicans for blocking his plan to provide renewable work permits and deportation exemptions for as many as five million undocumented immigrants.
"Over the long term, this is going to get solved because at some point there's going to be a President Rodriguez or there's going to be a President Chen," Obama said at the time, during a town hall meeting in South Florida.
A Texas judge blocked the presidential order just as it was about to take effect, setting the stage for a showdown between the GOP and the Obama administration that still hasn't been resolved.
"We'll take a close look at what the next court decision is and move from there," Johnson said of the plan's present constitutional challenge that's being led by several Republican-led states. "We are still very determined to do what we can within our existing legal authority to fix the immigration system."
Johnson has also been urging town officials along the southwest border to resume cooperation with federal officials' requests to detain undocumented immigrants who have a criminal record when they are caught -- something some border towns have explicitly forbidden their police forces to do.
Despite the significant drop in illegal border crossings, Johnson said the Obama administration fully understands that there is a lot of work left to do.
"We are not declaring 'Mission Accomplished," he said.
