WASHINGTON—A spike in families and children arriving at the U.S. southern border from Central America has prompted fears of another crisis like the one that dominated national news during the summer of 2014. That could roil an already tumultuous presidential race, giving more momentum to Republican front-runner Donald Trump while creating problems for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
The number of Central American families and unaccompanied minors arriving at the border this past fall more than doubled from the year before, according to the most recent figures. The numbers could go even higher beginning in February and early spring, when arrivals traditionally increase, potentially eclipsing the levels that produced the 2014 crisis.
Such concerns helped prompt the Department of Homeland Security, with the close involvement of the White House, to initiate crackdowns on migrants in several states over the holidays, picking up 121 people for deportation. In some instances people were detained during surprise early-morning home raids that have infuriated the president’s Democratic allies.
Clinton broke with Obama on the issue at an Iowa forum Monday night, Jan. 11, calling for an end to the raids that she said “have sown fear and division in immigrant communities across the country.”
“We have laws and we must be guided by those laws, but we shouldn’t have armed federal officers showing up at peoples’ homes, taking women and children out of their beds in the middle of the night,” she said in a statement.
