Border crisis keeps growing as more than 200,000 migrants illegally crossed in December

Authorities encountered 216,162 migrants at the southwest land border in December of last year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That figures marks an 11 percent increase in unique encounters from November of the same year. The federal agency attributed the surge to influx of Cuban and Nicaraguan individuals fleeing authoritarian regimes in those countries.

Cubans and Nicaraguans accounted for 77,043 of those encounters, roughly 36 percent of the total.

"[W]e are continuing to see a shifting migration pattern, with individuals from Mexico and northern Central America accounting for...