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The number of people from Mexico apprehended crossing the border illegally is dropping nationwide and Arizona mirrors the trend, a new report by the Pew Research Center showed.
Last year was the first time on record when there were more Central Americans apprehended at the border than Mexicans.
For Southern Arizona, the decline in Mexican arrests is similar.
Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency has apprehended 38,727 Mexican nationals in the last nine months, a 31 percent decline from the same time last year for the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol.
The Tucson sector ranges from the Arizona-New Mexico border to Yuma County.
In fiscal year 2014, an estimated 229,000 Mexican undocumented migrants were apprehended, a sharp drop from a peak of 1.6 million apprehended in 2000.
“The decline in apprehensions reflects the decrease in number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.,” the report said.
People from Mexico remain the largest population of undocumented immigrants already living in Arizona.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are 229,000 undocumented Mexican immigrants. Almost 90 percent of the state’s undocumented population.
Unauthorized immigrants from Mexico make up at least 75 percent of the total unauthorized immigrant population in nine other states: New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oregon and Texas, data from the Pew Research Center showed.
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