The United States has announced $US240 million in new humanitarian assistance to help meet the needs of refugees and migrants across the Americas and the Western Hemisphere.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the assistance would be delivered through health services, shelter, education and legal

“The support will help host communities better integrate migrant populations, including by funding programs to support migrants and applying for official status,” Mr Blinken said, speaking recently at a migration-themed event at a meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Lima.

The visit to Peru was Mr Blinken’s last stop on a week-long Latin America tour, as he tries to reassert US commitment to the region at a time when Washington’s foreign policy focus has been dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Of the new funding, nearly $82 million will be humanitarian assistance and will be provided to refugee and migrant communities across the region, according to the US State Department.

Over $US160 million will be in the form of bilateral and regional security assistance.

Nearly $US150 million of that will be provided through programs addressing weak criminal justice institutions in partner countries and corruption – among the reasons Washington sees as the root cause of migration from Central America.

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.