With tens of thousands people fleeing repression in Venezuela and Cuba, the Americas are seeing their biggest ever migration crisis, local reports says.

The latest exodus from Cuba and Venezuela adds to the flow of people from South and Central America, and particularly the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, towards the US border.

US officials are saying that an alarming increase in authoritarianism and a failure by governments to improve the lives of ordinary people is the root cause of this increased human displacement.

They say the scale of the displacement has never been seen before in the Americas.

The number of migrants being detained at the US border with Mexico continues to break records, creating a major political problem for the Biden administration before the midterm elections in November.

About 2.3 million migrants were detained in the year to the end of July, an increase of 63 per cent on the same period a year earlier.

US Customs and Border Protection officials say just over half of migrants stopped in the month of July came from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries – overwhelmingly, the traditional source of people heading for the US.

They say that now, large numbers of Venezuelans, Cubans, Colombians and Nicaraguans are also among the migrants, as well as smaller numbers of Brazilians, Haitians and Ecuadoreans.

Observers say Venezuela’s deep political and economic crisis remains the biggest single driver of migration in the Americas.

Almost 7 million Venezuelans have fled a collapsing economy and an increasingly authoritarian government – around the same number as the refugee exodus from Syria’s civil war.

Many Venezuelans have found refuge in other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile.

But US officials says the economic damage in the region from the COVID-19 pandemic and to a loss of hope by Cubans after the authorities cracked down on protests there last year are also ‘push factors’.

They says more than 175,000 Cuban migrants were detained in the US in the 10 months to the end of July, the fastest rate of migration since the 1959 revolution.

In July, 2021 anti-austerity demonstrations in Cuba surprised the Cuban leadership and sparked a crackdown.

Meanwhile, criminal have taken up profitable opportunities to traffic desperate migrants towards the US.

Last year, the Biden administration launched a $US4 billion four-year strategy to tackle the causes of increased migration in Central America.

But the problems are systemic and deep and will take many years to resolve, observers say.

President of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute Andrew Selee says the US strategy was important but it focused only on Central America.

“In Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua the US has no ability to return people because there are no deportation flights, so there’s a huge incentive for people to leave, but there’s also little stopping them from trying to reach the United States, except for the fear of what could happen to you along the journey,” he said.

He said many migrant families already had a relative inside the US and now had the means to leave.

In Central America and much of the rest of the region, the main issues triggering migration revolve around inequality and exclusion and very low confidence that conditions for ordinary people will improve.

And despite the Biden administration’s focus on democracy and human rights, several Central American nations have become increasingly authoritarian turn.

Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador have all seen the degradation of independent media and the targeting of opposition politicians.

The US has imposed sanctions on dozens of officials for alleged corruption but little appears to have changed in these countries.