The number of illegal immigrants crossing the southwestern US border hit records in May of this year. According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by NBC News, the major reason is the increase in immigration of nationalities that were previously rarely found at the US-Mexico border.

CBP stopped migrants at the southwest border of the U.S. more than 239,000 times in May, though this includes migrants who attempted to cross more than once. The number of individual migrants who attempted to cross the border was 157,555, still up by 2% over April’s previous record high.

The number of people from India, Turkey, Russia, Haiti, Brazil, Colombia, and Nicaragua increased, according to the publication, due to the difficulty of border agents in submitting some people of these nationalities to border restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, known as “Title 42”, which allow the US to quickly send migrants back to their home countries.

“Colombians, for example, accounted for nearly 20,000 border crossings in May, a sharp increase from the 821 Colombians who crossed in May 2021. Only 134 of the nearly 20,000 Colombians who crossed the border in May were subjected to Title 42”, according to the publication.

The percentage of Haitian migrants expelled under Title 42 restrictions also dropped in May. However, in early June there was an increase in flights departing the US taking Haitian nationals back to their home country. US border officials expect these flights to prevent more Haitians from making the crossing, according to the publication.

“Many of the Haitians are coming to the U.S. from third countries like Brazil, where they sought work after the 2010 earthquake only to lose their livelihood during the Covid pandemic, according to U.S. officials. When those people are deported to Haiti, they are landing in a country they have not known in over a decade”, according to the NBC.

However, Title 42 was responsible for the drop in immigration via the southern border from countries coming from Central America, a region that fed most of the crossings in the same place in the last decade. About 60% of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were barred from entering the US under pandemic restrictions.

“A federal judge in Louisiana has placed a temporary block on the lifting of Title 42, saying the Biden administration did not properly allow states that would be affected by the change to weigh in before it tried to end the policy on May 23”.