U.S. Border Patrol agents are collecting hundreds of illegal immigrants at a time, thousands per day, as they continue to flood across the southern border to the land of opportunity.

It’s not a new situation, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show the demographic coming across has changed drastically in the last decade, with Mexico now contributing a much smaller share of those apprehended.

“Rio Grande Valley #BorderPatrol agents taking into custody a group of 168 illegal aliens near Hidalgo, Texas,” CBP RGV posted to Twitter, along with an image of dozens lined up between patrol SUVs and ORVs. “The group consisted of family units and unaccompanied children from Central America, Venezuela and Cuba.”

Every sector on the border is witnessing a massive increase in illegal border crossings compared to last year, with over 144,000 apprehensions and inadmissibles in May alone. That’s nearly five times as many as the same month last year, when apprehensions and inadmissions peaked at 51,862, CBP data shows.

In the Rio Grande Valley, “the number of apprehensions … this fiscal year has surpassed the apprehensions numbers during the humanitarian crisis experienced in 2014,” according to a CBP release.

But it’s not just the numbers coming in, it’s also what they’re doing and where they came from that’s changed drastically in recent years.

“The majority of these apprehensions are people turning themselves in to the first Border Patrol Agent they encounter,” CBP reports. “For Fiscal Year 2019, 90% of apprehensions are from countries other than Mexico.

“With apprehensions in excess of 1,000 per day, the RGV Sector personnel continues to process the illegal aliens as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

CBP data show the total number of deportable aliens apprehended in Fiscal Year 2007 included more than 800,000 from Mexico, followed by Honduras with more than 21,000, Guatemala with over 16,000, and El Salvador, with well over 13,000.

In Fiscal Year 2018, those figures were 152,000 from Mexico, 115,000 from Guatemala, 76,000 from Honduras, and 31,000 from El Salvador.

Through May of Fiscal Year 2019 – with four months left to go – 149,000 have come across from Guatemala, 129,000 from Honduras, and 35,000 from El Salvador, CBP data shows.

News reports from Mexico’s border with Guatemala in the south and the U.S. in the north both indicate large numbers of illegal immigrants from the Congo, Cameroon, Chana, Haiti, Cuba, and the Middle East are also making their way through Mexico in mini caravans.

Many of those migrants are reportedly flying into South American countries before trekking through Panama and Central America in pursuit of the American Dream, inspired by thousands who have successfully exploited loopholes in the immigration system.

Volunteers in Panama’s Darien Gap, a pinch point in the journey north, told the Center for Immigration Studies’ Chuck Holton as many as 35,000 are already on the way.

“They’d been coming, but now they’ve reached a point in Panama where they’re overwhelmed,” Diane Edrington, a volunteer with Panama Missions, told Holton in mid-June. “It seems like there are more countries represented. There are a lot of Africans now.”