As the number of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. surges, the number of apprehensions along the southern border has increased and the Department of Homeland Security has requested additional help at the border.

"Once again, we need to tap into our department’s greatest resource: the skills of our talented and diverse workforce," John Tien, DHS deputy secretary, said in an email sent earlier this month, as reported March 17 by Fox News. "Today, I am asking you to consider stepping forward to support the DHS Volunteer Force." 

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said the agency is much busier now than it was a year ago, Fox News reported March 29. In February 2021, there were 101,099 migrant encounters. In February 2022, that number increased to 164,973, according to Fox News. March's numbers are expected to dwarf those from February.

"Probably in the next two or three days, we’ll get over a million encounters or apprehensions along the southwest border," Ortiz said at a border security conference in San Antonio, Texas. This would mean that the 2022 fiscal year, which started in October, will have a million cases with more than six months to go. For reference, fiscal year 2021 saw 1.7 million migrant encounters, with the majority of those numbers coming from the second half of the fiscal year, Fox News reported.

In April 2020, Reuters reported an uptick in Mexican cartels are shifting to human trafficking. These cartels include the oil pipeline-tapping Santa Rosa de Lima gang, as well as the Tepito Union drug gang.

 An April 2021 New York Post opinion piece cited a study that estimates 60 percent of Latin American children "who set out to cross the border alone or with smugglers have been caught by the cartels and are being abused in child pornography or drug trafficking."

According to the New York Post article, traffickers who pose as parents exploit the Biden administration's policy that allows children and families caught at the border to come into the U.S.