With all the talk about southern border security and a security crisis, I figured I’d poke around and see what data is available that illustrates long term trends in apprehensions along the southern border, and plot those statistics by presidency. Fun project, and I’ll burn through a few iterations of the graphic as I get some ideas. Here’s my first attempt:
So far the only trend I see is a sharp decline in apprehensions beginning with George W. Bush’s presidency and continuing through Barak Obama’s. The current apprehension levels on the southern border have not been seen since the Nixon era.
There’s likely multiple modifications I can make to the infographic. The trend line was a quick fit with a black line. It’s likely too heavy of a contrast and I’ll have to lighten that to fit the color scheme. I’m not sure I like the bar next to the president names. I think the alternating colors for different presidents on the bar graphs are likely sufficient rendering the vertical line redundant. I’d also like to add more summary statistics and maybe numerical representations of the trend numbers, but that could clutter the plot.