Adam Isacson

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Developments

A 38-year-old mother from Ecuador was found dead along the Mexican side of the border wall, south of Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector (southeast California), on July 22. Border Patrol agents found the victim’s 10-year-old daughter alive next to her body. The cause of death appeared to be heat exhaustion and/or dehydration.

• “Cuerpo de Migrante Ecuatoriana Fue Hallado en Frontera Entre Mexico y Estados Unidos, su Hija de 10 Anos la Acompanaba” (El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), July 30, 2024).
• “Usbp Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino @Usbpchiefelc on Twitter” (Twitter, Monday, July 29, 2024)

In an en banc ruling, the federal judiciary’s Fifth Circuit permitted Texas’s state government to keep a 1,000-foot string of buoys and serrated metal discs floating in the middle of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass while legal challenges continue. The ruling overturned an appeals court’s earlier decision. A trial over the buoys themselves—not the injunction preventing their use while arguments continue—is to begin on August 6 in Austin.

One of the notoriously conservative circuit’s Judges, James Ho, submitted an opinion supporting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) use of the Constitution’s “invasion” clause, implying that migrants and asylum seekers are foreign invaders against whom Texas may defend itself.

• Ryan Autullo, “Texas Can Maintain Floating Border Barriers, Fifth Circuit Rules” (Bloomberg Law, July 30, 2024).
• “Aaron Torres @aarontorres_ on Twitter” (Twitter, July 30, 2024).
• “Raffi Melkonian @Rmfifthcircuit on Twitter” (Twitter, July 30, 2024).

The border and migration were core issues in dueling campaign ads and speeches issued in the past 48 hours by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

In a new video ad and at an Atlanta campaign rally yesterday, Harris attacked Trump for leading opposition to a Senate “border deal” bill in February that would have paid for hiring more Border Patrol agents and would have cut off asylum access when border encounters exceed a daily threshold. “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law,” Harris said yesterday.

• Asma Khalid, “Harris Tries to Flip the Script on Trump on the Border During Raucous Georgia Speech” (National Public Radio, July 30, 2024).
• Priscilla Alvarez, “Harris Campaign Offers First Glimpse of Its Immigration Offensive” (CNN, July 30, 2024).

(See past daily links posts for coverage of that failed legislation. On June 5 the Biden administration began implementing a rule, without legislation backing it up, that bans asylum when daily Border Patrol apprehensions exceed 2,500.) On Monday the union representing asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) filed a brief in support of the ACLU’s lawsuit seeking to block the June 5 rule.

• Hamed Aleaziz, “Asylum Officers’ Union Opposes Biden Border Restrictions” (The New York Times, July 30, 2024).

The Trump campaign continued attacking Harris with themes (criminals, fentanyl, and terrorists allegedly crossing the border) that appeared in its first television ad of the general election, released Monday. At a press conference, Senate Republicans featured a blown-up printout of a 2017 tweet from then-senator Harris reading, “An undocumented migrant is not a criminal.” (This is true: being in the United States without documentation is not a criminal offense.)

• Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), “Daines: ‘If You Like San Francisco Politics, You’ll Love Kamala Harris’” (U.S. Senate, July 30, 2024).
• Frank Bruni, “Trump vs. ‘America’s Border Czar’” (The New York Times, July 30, 2024).

Media analyses continued to explore Harris’s vice presidential record on border and migration policy, particularly her performance as the Biden administration’s point person on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America.

Though her initial efforts in that role were “widely panned, even by some Democrats,” the New York Times stated, she later had “some success” in “a role that came to be defined as a combination of chief fund-raiser and conduit between business leaders and the economies” of northern Central America, particularly in encouraging private-sector investment.

Though it is hard to assign weight to the long-term strategy that Harris oversaw, U.S.-Mexico border encounters with migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras dropped from an average of 58,420 per month in fiscal 2021 to 38,657 per month (-34%) so far in fiscal 2024. By contrast, average monthly encounters with all nationalities increased 40 percent during that period.

• Jazmine Ulloa, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “As Republicans Attack Harris on Immigration, Here’s What Her Record Shows” (The New York Times, July 31, 2024).
• Carine Hajjar, “‘Czar’ or Not, Kamala Harris Bungled Immigration” (The Boston Globe, July 30, 2024).

Operating on the assumption that then-senator Harris’s support of migrant rights and asylum could be a liability in the national presidential campaign, analyses at the Washington Post and NBC News suggested that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona)—a “border hawk” who opposed lifting the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy—would be a vice-presidential running mate who could shield her from charges of being insufficiently tough on the border.

• Liz Goodwin, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, “Mark Kelly Could Help Harris on a Challenging Issue: Immigration” (The Washington Post, July 30, 2024).
• Sahil Kapur, “Border State Hawk Mark Kelly as Vp Pick Could Help Shield Harris on a Major Liability” (NBC News, July 30, 2024).

Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance is to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in southeast Arizona on Thursday.

• Brett Samuels, “Vance to Visit Southern Border as Trump Campaign Hits Harris on Immigration” (The Hill, July 30, 2024).
• “JD Vance to Visit Cochise County Border With Mexico Thursday” (The Sierra Vista Herald Review, July 30, 2024).

President Joe Biden is to sign a national security memorandum on Wednesday increasing information-sharing between federal and local law enforcement agencies about flows of fentanyl, including cross-border flows.

• Aamer Madhani, “Biden Prods Congress to Act to Curb Fentanyl From Mexico as Trump Paints Harris as Weak on Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 31, 2024).

Venezuelan migrants waiting in Ciudad Juárez for CBP One appointments told La Verdad de Juárez that they are distraught and frustrated by authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent re-election in national voting on July 28. “Everyone is crying, is sad because we had hope that this was going to settle,” said a man who has been waiting four months for a CBP One appointment.

• Raul Flores, “Con Frustracion, Venezolanos en Ciudad Juarez Rechazan Resultados de la Eleccion en Venezuela” (La Verdad (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), July 30, 2024).

In response to the Venezuelan outcome and likely repression, Antonia Urrejola, a former Chilean foreign minister and ex-president of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, advised the region’s governments to “begin to prepare a coordinated response to the migratory wave [from Venezuela] that could occur in the coming weeks or months.”

• Francisco Artaza, “Antonia Urrejola, Excanciller: “Es Urgente Que los Paises de la Region Coordinen una Respuesta para una Nueva Ola Migratoria Venezolana”” (La Tercera (Chile), July 30, 2024).

With migrant arrivals at the border down to levels not seen since the fall of 2020, New York City is now measuring fewer than 1,000 migrants seeking shelter for the first time since October 2022, Gothamist reported.

• Arya Sundaram, “Weekly Migrant Arrivals in Nyc Dip Below 1,000 for the First Time Since 2022” (Gothamist, July 30, 2024).

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York), Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois), and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) introduced the “Destination Reception Assistance Act,” which would assist asylum-seeking migrants and the U.S. communities receiving them. Several prominent Democratic legislators and NGO leaders added comments endorsing the bill.

• Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), “Senator Markey and Reps. Meng, Ramirez, Espaillat Introduce Destination Reception Assistance Act to Support Local Reception of New Arrivals” (U.S. Senate, July 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The New York Times fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that crime has declined in Venezuela because Nicolás Maduro’s regime has sent the country’s criminals to the United States. This is false: to the extent that crime has decreased in Venezuela, it represents a consolidation of organized crime control within the country, with fewer competing gangs.

• Jorge Valencia, “Trump Says Venezuela Sends Criminals to the U.S. Here’s What to Know.” (The New York Times, July 31, 2024).

The conservative outlet NewsNation, citing a Border Patrol “internal safety bulletin,” reported that 1,000 members of Venezuela’s “Tren de Aragua” organized crime group are in the United States with orders to attack police. West Texas border district Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) gave comments amplifying the allegation.

• Ali Bradley, “Over 1,000 Venezuelan Crime Organization Members in US” (NewsNation, July 30, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “10,000 Foreign Criminals Have Slipped Through Border, Congressman Says” (Border Report, July 30, 2024).

Due to a suspension of government funding, five temporary shelters for in-transit migrants closed in Guatemala between November 2023 and March 2024, according to Expediente Público.

• Marysabel Aldana, “Cierran Casas para Migrantes en Guatemala” (Expediente Publico, July 31, 2024).

On the Right

• Elizabeth Heckman, “Texas Governor, Border Patrol Council Say They’ve Never Heard From Vp Harris: ‘Abject Failure’” (Fox News, July 30, 2024).

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Developments

Donald Trump’s campaign released its first television ad of the general election, and it focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border. It “attacks likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris as an evasive, weak and distracted leader who did not protect the U.S.-Mexico border from drug trafficking, increased migrant crossings and a possible terrorism threat,” the Washington Post reported.

The ad begins with an image of Harris and the line, “This is ‘America’s Border Czar,’ and she has failed us.” The Vice President, who was tasked only with addressing root causes of migration in Central America, never held such a title.

• Michael Scherer, “Trump campaign attacks Kamala Harris in a new immigration-focused ad” (The Washington Post, July 30, 2024).

“She was given a very hard, difficult, convoluted portfolio,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, told Reuters of the “Central America root causes” role that the Biden administration assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris in early 2021. The Reuters report goes on to evaluate the objectives that Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, pursued in that role.

• Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg, Ted Hesson, “Republicans Call Harris a Failed Border Czar. The Truth Is More Complicated.” (Reuters, Reuters, July 30, 2024).

The Senate Appropriations Committee was set to mark up (amend and approve a draft of) the 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill, which funds DHS and its components. It will not do so, however, due to disagreements over funding for the Secret Service. The chamber is almost certain to leave Washington for its August recess without a Homeland Appropriations bill out of committee.

• “Ellen M. Gilmer @Ellengilmer on Twitter” (Twitter, July 29, 2024).

The California-based iNewSource describes disturbing Border Patrol body-worn camera footage of the March death of Guatemalan migrant Petronila Elizabeth Poma Perez, who fell from the border wall near San Diego after hanging and crying for help for over 20 minutes while agents awaited backup. The article points to a lack of coordination between Border Patrol agents and local fire department personnel.

• Sofia Mejias-Pascoe, “She Cried for Help Atop U.S.-Mexico Border Fence, Then Fell to Death” (inewsource, July 29, 2024).

NewsNation reported that Border Patrol has built a layer of secondary border fencing in its El Centro, California sector in order to “try and stop the flow of fentanyl.”

• Ali Bradley, Patrick Djordjevic, “Calif. Border Agents Install Second Border Wall to Stop Fentanyl Flow” (NewsNation, Border Report, July 29, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Though Panama’s new president, José Raúl Mulino, has used barbed wire to block at least five paths in the Darién Gap, “I can say that Mulino’s plan has little chance of succeeding,” wrote Thomson Reuters correspondent Anastasia Moloney, who has walked the Colombian side of the dangerous route traversed by more than half a million migrants last year. “When there’s a crackdown on migrant routes, smugglers respond by raising their fees.”

• Anastasia Moloney, “Why It’s Impossible to Close the Darien Gap With Barbed-Wire” (Thomson Reuters Foundation, Context, July 30, 2024).

A brief from the Women’s Refugee Commission lays out several recommendations to promote orderly and safe migration throughout the Americas, including more legal migration pathways including an improved Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela parole program; improving the Safe Mobility Initiative currently active in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala; working with civil society to implement commitments in the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration; support for Mexico’s asylum system and migrant shelters, and supporting deported non-Mexican migrants’ integration in Mexico.

• “Migration Does Not Start at the Us Border: A Regional Approach to Managing Migration and Keeping People Safe” (Women’s Refugee Commission, July 29, 2024).

Reporting from Ciudad Juárez, NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán talked to asylum seekers who have been trying for as many as nine months to secure one of 200 daily CBP One appointments at an El Paso port of entry.

• Sergio Martinez-Beltran, “Illegal Crossings Hit Biden-Era Low as Migrants Wait Longer for Entry” (National Public Radio, July 30, 2024).

CBS News visited El Paso’s Annunciation House migrant shelter, which has been the subject of a legal assault from the Texas state attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), who claims that it is a “stash house” for undocumented people. In early July a state judge blocked Paxton’s effort to demand that the shelter provide documents, but Paxton is appealing that decision to Texas’s State Supreme Court.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Suvro Banerji, “Texas Targets Faith-Based Groups Helping Migrants Along U.S.-Mexico Border” (CBS News, July 29, 2024).

Cronkite News looked at the legal hurdles that would remain if Arizona voters approve Proposition 314, which would make it a state crime to cross the border without federal inspection. The Biden administration Justice Department is already challenging a similar Texas law, S.B. 4, which remains on hold pending appeals.

• Alex Cunningham, “Arizona’s Ballot Measure on Border Law Faces Legal Hurdles if Approved” (Cronkite News, The Arizona Daily Star, July 29, 2024).

On the Right

• Phillip Linderman, “Secure the Mexican Border by Using Section 212(F)” (The American Conservative, July 30, 2024).
• A.G. Gancarski, “Czar to Believe: Democrats Didn’t Rush to Absolve Vp Kamala Harris of Border Blame” (The New York Post, July 29, 2024).

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Developments

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, told CBS News that, if elected, Harris would keep in place the Biden administration’s current restrictions on asylum access at the U.S.-Mexico border. “The policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue,” Chávez Rodríguez told CBS reporter Camilo Montoya-Gálvez.

This means that Harris might keep in place the June 2024 rule prohibiting asylum for most migrants who arrive at the border between ports of entry, and the May 2023 rule prohibiting asylum for migrants between ports of entry who did not first seek protection in a third country en route to the United States. Both rules are facing legal challenges, as U.S. law guarantees the right to seek asylum on U.S. soil regardless of how the asylum seeker arrived.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Kamala Harris’ Campaign Chief Signals She Would Keep Biden’s Border Crackdown if Elected” (CBS News, July 27, 2024).

While this story is far from over, the Venezuelan regime’s evidence-free announcement that President Nicolás Maduro won July 28 elections dashes hopes that a transition from authoritarianism to democracy might reduce or even reverse migration from the South American nation. Instead, if Maduro’s victory stands, polling of Venezuelans indicates that more will consider leaving.

• Leopoldo Lopez, Markos Kounalakis, “Venezuelan Elections Could Turn the Refugee Tide” (Washington Monthly, July 28, 2024).

Venezuelans awaiting CBP One appointments in Ciudad Juárez told El Imparcial that they fear that the country’s political and economic crises will make life there even more intolerable.

• Tadeo Campoy, “Venezolanos Varados en la Frontera de Mexico Temen Agudizacion de la Crisis Tras Elecciones en Venezuela” (El Imparcial (Tijuana Mexico), July 28, 2024).

A bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators and representatives met in Mexico City last week with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum. Border and migration concerns “took center stage” in their conversations, reported the Arizona Republic.

• Silvia Solis, “Border Security, Economy Took Center Stage in Talks Between Sheinbaum, Members of Congress” (The Arizona Republic, July 27, 2024).

The flow of northbound-transiting migrants into Honduras from Nicaragua has fallen by more than half, from 1,482 per day in May to 791 per day during the first 24 months of July. “Migration experts claim that the significant decrease is due to the closure of several points in the Darien Jungle,” reported Nicaragua’s Radio Corporación.

• “Disminuyen Cruces Irregulares de Migrantes Entre Nicaragua y Honduras” (Radio Corporación (Nicaragua), July 27, 2024).

Though 97 percent of fentanyl seizures have been happening in Arizona and California, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is devoting more interdiction resources to the El Paso area out of a belief that crackdowns further west may push cross-border opioid smugglers to west Texas, Milenio reported.

• Norma Ponce, “Eu Redobla Operativos en Frontera Chihuahua – Texas para Combatir el Trafico de Fentanilo” (Milenio (Mexico), July 28, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Major media outlets published more analyses of Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s border and migration record.

In an in-depth piece at the New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer recalled that Harris never had a position of responsibility for managing the border: instead, she was charged with addressing root causes of migration from Central America. This “was, by definition, slow and strategic work—essential from a policy perspective but politically inopportune.”

• Jonathan Blitzer, “The Real Story of Kamala Harris’s Record on Immigration” (The New Yorker, July 28, 2024).

“The distinction has not stopped Republicans from misleadingly branding Harris as the nation’s ‘border czar’ and blaming her for the sharp upticks in migration under the Biden administration,” read an analysis by Lauren Gambino at the Guardian, which notes that as a senator, Harris was an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s border policies.

• Lauren Gambino, “Republicans Want to Grill Harris for Her Immigration Record – but What Is It?” (The Guardian (Uk), July 27, 2024).

Progressive Democratic legislators, and leaders of Latino and immigrants’ rights groups, are supporting Harris despite disagreements with the Biden administration’s hardening of some border and migration policies, like its bans on asylum, the New York Times reported.

• Jazmine Ulloa, “Latino Leaders Set Aside Their Rocky Past With Kamala Harris on Immigration” (The New York Times, July 27, 2024).

Centrist Democratic legislators, Politico reported, are pushing for Harris to name as her vice-presidential candidate Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who they say “knows the border well.” Kelly is among a handful of Democratic senators who urged the Biden administration to keep the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy in place before it expired in May 2023.

• Adam Cancryn, Anthony Adragna, Sarah Ferris, Ursula Perano, “Hill Dems Believe This Vp Contender Would Help Address Harris’ Biggest Weakness” (Politico, July 28, 2024).

Joe Biden’s administration has expelled or deported more migrants than Donald Trump’s, recalls a Politico analysis by Jack Herrera. This is largely because Biden’s administration has seen a much larger population of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Jack Herrera, “Trump Says He Wants to Deport Millions. He’ll Have a Hard Time Removing More People Than Biden Has.” (Politico, July 28, 2024).

A Washington Post feature looked at Chinese migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, which has increased sharply in the past 18 months. Migrants cite economic hardship and political repression, exacerbated by COVID-19 lockdowns, as primary reasons for leaving. Those interviewed by the Post paid smugglers between $8,000 and $60,000 per person for their journeys to the United States. Ecuador, which has been most Chinese migrants’ first entry into the Americas mainland, recently suspended visas for arriving Chinese citizens, but higher-priced alternative smuggling routes emerged “within days.”

• Cate Cadell, Li Qiang, Nick Miroff, “Migrants From China ‘Walk the Line’ to U.S. Border, Testing Biden and Xi” (The Washington Post, July 29, 2024).

“With its latest anti-asylum rule, mirroring similar bans by Trump, the Biden administration is forcing individuals into the hands of traffickers and cartels, pushing them to more dangerous routes,” wrote Jennifer Babaie of the El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center at the Austin American-Statesman.

• Jennifer Babaie, “U.S. Treatment of Refugees Is Cruel, Forcing Them Into the Hands of Cartels” (Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, The Austin American-Statesman, July 29, 2024).

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Developments

By a vote of 220-196, the Republican-majority House of Representatives approved a resolution “Strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”

Six Democrats from swing districts voted with the Republicans: Yadira Caraveo (Denver suburbs, Colorado); Henry Cuéllar (Laredo and Rio Grande Valley, Texas); Donald Davis (northeastern North Carolina); Jared Golden (rural Maine); Mary Peltola (Alaska); and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (southwestern Washington).

The resolution had originally read “on March 24, 2021, President Biden asked Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the administration’s border czar.” After Democrats in the House Rules Committee pointed out that this was factually inaccurate, the language changed to “came to be known colloquially as the Biden administration’s ‘border czar.’”

“This is like voting on a press release. What a colossal waste of time,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee.

• Stephen Groves, “House Republicans Vote to Rebuke Kamala Harris Over Administration’s Handling of Border Policy” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 25, 2024).
• “Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern on Twitter” (Twitter, July 25, 2024).

Much press coverage continues to analyze Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s border and migration record. Republican statements and advertising, meanwhile, continue to seek lines of attack on the same issue.

Media analyses point out that Harris’s role was not the “border” but addressing “root causes” of migration from Central America. A Los Angeles Times examination of Harris’s role indicated that the Vice President’s interest in the issue flagged during her tenure.

• Andrea Castillo, Kate Linthicum, Kevin Rector, Patrick J. Mcdonnell, “Republicans Frame Kamala Harris as a Failed ‘Border Czar.’ What Did She Really Do on Migration as Vp?” (Los Angeles Times, Yahoo!, July 26, 2024).
• Lauren Villagran, Rebecca Morin, “Border Politics Heat Up in White House Race: Where Does Harris Stand on Immigration?” (USA Today, July 25, 2024).
• Paola Nagovitch, “No, Kamala Harris Was Never the ‘Border Czar’” (El Pais (Spain), July 26, 2024).
• Max Cohen, “The Harris Border Ads Hit the Airwaves” (Punchbowl News, July 26, 2024).
• Stephen Dinan, “Biden Claims Credit for Low Border Encounters in Critical Political Moment for His Vice President” (The Washington Times, July 25, 2024).
• Phil Boas, “‘Border Czar’ or Not, Kamala Harris Ran From Her Job to Get the Border Under Control” (The Arizona Republic, July 25, 2024).
• Ashley Papa, Michael Ruiz, “Kamala Harris’ House Condemnation for Border Failure ‘Long Overdue but Absolutely Warranted’: Brandon Judd” (Fox News, July 26, 2024).
• Billal Rahman, “Kamala Harris ‘Owns’ Migrant Crisis, Former Border Chief Says” (Newsweek, July 26, 2024).

On a visit to the border in San Diego, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) added to attacks on what he called “the Biden-Harris border catastrophe,” adding the false talking point that undocumented migrants will play a role in voter fraud against Republicans in the November elections.

• Jasmine Ramirez, “House Speaker Visits San Diego’s Southern Border to Discuss Immigration” (KFMB, July 25, 2024).

Border Patrol has now found the remains of 140 migrants in its El Paso sector, a segment of the border stretching from the Arizona-New Mexico border to just east of El Paso, during fiscal year 2024. In all of fiscal 2023, the figure was 149 migrant deaths, a record for the sector that is certain to be broken, as the region’s scorching-hot summer is far from over.

The rising fatalities are occurring even as migrant apprehensions plummet in the sector (and border-wide). It may be that, with asylum blocked for many under the Biden administration’s new June 2024 restrictions, more people are trying to evade apprehension in the desert. The organization No More Deaths announced a new update to its El Paso migrant death map for 2024.

• Julian Resendiz, “Border Patrol Appeals to Migrant Relatives as Death Toll Now at 140 in el Paso Sector” (Border Report, July 25, 2024).

The Senate Appropriations Committee will “mark up” (amend and approve its version of) the 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill on Thursday, August 1. The bill text is not yet public.

• “Full Committee Markup of Energy and Water Development; Defense; Labor, Health, and Human Services; Homeland Security; And Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Acts” (Senate Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate, July 25, 2024).

After suffering judicial setbacks in efforts to prosecute or sue El Paso’s Annunciation House and McAllen’s Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton (R) is now going after a third respite center that receives migrants released from CBP custody. Paxton is now seeking to compel management of Team Brownsville to sit for a deposition. The hard-right state official believes that these charities, whose work prevents releases of migrants onto border cities’ streets, are encouraging undocumented migration.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Texas Attorney General Going After 3rd Border Nonprofit That Helps Migrants” (Border Report, July 25, 2024).

A CBP helicopter “made an emergency landing or crashed into Mexican territory” near Laredo yesterday evening.

• “U.S. Border Patrol Helicopter Reportedly Crashes, Lands on Mexican Territory” (KGNS (Laredo Texas), July 25, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A new report from nine U.S. organizations presented more than 30 examples of due process and human rights violations suffered by asylum seekers at the border since the Biden administration’s June 5 rule restricting asylum went into effect. Abuses include arbitrary deportations without an opportunity to seek protection in the United States; obstacles to accessing legal representation; inhumane detention conditions; and family separations.

• “Six Weeks After Biden’s Second Asylum Ban Took Effect, Advocates Report Rampant Rights Violations at U.S.-Mexico Border” (Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Hope Border Institute, Human Rights First, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, Refugees International, the National Immigration Law Center, Women’s Refugee Commission, National Immigrant Justice Center, July 25, 2024).

The outcome of Venezuela’s Sunday presidential election could have a big effect on migration from a country that has seen a quarter of its population exit since the mid-2010s. If the opposition wins, as polls predict, migration could slow and some Venezuelans could return. If the authoritarian Maduro regime declares itself the victor, migration could increase further.

• Astrid Suarez, Gisela Salomon, Nayara Batschke, Teresa Medrano, “Forced to Emigrate, Venezuelans Living Abroad Hope for Change — and to Eventually Return Home” (Associated Press, July 25, 2024).
• Dan Gooding, “Venezuelan Presidential Election Could Impact Migrants Headed to Us” (Newsweek, July 25, 2024).

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Developments

Panamanian police found the bodies of ten migrants, their nationalities not yet identified, who drowned in the Darién Gap while trying to cross a river swollen by seasonal rains. They had apparently sought to take a shorter route through the treacherous region, involving more boat travel and less walking, for which smugglers charge a higher fee.

Panama’s border police (SENAFRONT) urged migrants to cross the Darién using “the authorized passage for irregular migration leading to Cañas Blancas, where specialized patrols are available for their protection and humanitarian assistance.” Panama’s new government has sought to block some other routes with barbed wire.

• Luke Taylor, “Ten People Drown in Darien Gap While Trying to Cross Swollen River” (The Guardian (Uk), July 24, 2024).
• “Hallan 10 Cadaveres de Migrantes Que Murieron Ahogados en Panama” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), July 24, 2024).

As the Biden administration’s June 5 asylum restrictions have brought a short-term drop in migration, Mexico’s migration authority (National Migration Institute, INM) is closing a tent shelter for migrants that it had established in Ciudad Juárez in late 2023. As of earlier this month, Border Report reported, Ciudad Juárez’s migrant shelters were more than half full, housing many families awaiting the 200 daily CBP One appointments at a port of entry across the Rio Grande in El Paso.

• Julian Resendiz, “Juarez to Close Tent Refuge, as Migrants Vanish” (Border Report, July 24, 2024).

A Texas state judge ruled that Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which runs a large shelter for migrants released from CBP custody in McAllen, does not have to give a sworn deposition to state prosecutors.

Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton (R) has launched a legal offensive against charities that receive released migrants, accusing them of encouraging illegal migration. A judge in El Paso recently struck down a similar effort to investigate El Paso’s Annunciation House shelter network, which is also associated with the Catholic faith. Paxton is appealing the Annunciation House ruling, and yesterday’s Catholic Charities decision only stops the deposition, not Paxton’s larger investigation.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Judge Rules in Favor of Catholic Charities Rgv in State of Texas’ Investigation” (Border Report, July 24, 2024).
• Valerie Gonzalez, “Judge’s Order Shields Catholic Charities From Deposition as Texas Investigates Border Aid Groups” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 24, 2024).

Discussing Hamas cross-border raids into Israel before an audience of Texas sheriffs, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) added, “You can use my analogy, not to the same magnitude of course, but you can use my analogy, something that Texas law enforcement deals with” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Francesca D’annunzio, “Greg Abbott Compares Hamas Attacks to Texas Border Crossings at Sheriffs’ Conference” (The Texas Observer, July 24, 2024).

A look at Border Patrol apprehensions shows that the Texas state government’s $11 billion “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown has had little effect amid a border-wide drop in migration, and it has not pushed migration into other border states, as Gov. Abbott has claimed.

Since the record-setting month of December, after which Mexico began an aggressive campaign of blocking northbound migrants, Border Patrol apprehensions in Texas fell 82 percent by June—but they fell 70 percent in Democratic Party-governed Arizona and 67 percent border-wide.

Since January, migrant apprehensions in Arizona (-52%) have actually dropped more sharply than in Texas (-40%). From May to June, Texas fell 36 percent and Arizona 33 percent; the whole border fell 29 percent.

• Adam Isacson, “Texas’s Abusive Border Policies Haven’t Made Much Difference“ (Adam Isacson, July 24, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in border and migration policy continues to receive scrutiny. Many media outlets have clarified that, as vice president, Harris had no direct border responsibilities, and that oft-repeated Republican claims that she was a sort of White House “border czar” are false.

Harris was tasked, however, with a diplomatic effort to address the root causes of migration in northern Central America. While it is hard to link this long-term effort to short-term migration impacts, Central American migrants are among very few nationalities whose numbers have declined since 2021 at the U.S.-Mexico border. Comparing an average month in fiscal 2024 to an average month in fiscal 2021, migrant encounters with Hondurans have fallen 50 percent, with Salvadorans 39 percent, and with Guatemalans 14 percent. Border encounters with all nationalities’ migrants, meanwhile, are up 40 percent.

• Priscilla Alvarez, “Harris’ Immigration Work Comes Under Scrutiny as Campaign Takes Shape” (CNN, July 24, 2024).
• Maria Ramirez Uribe, “‘Border Czar’? Gop Talking Point Distorts Vp Harrris’ Role” (PolitiFact, July 24, 2024).
• Aline Barros, “Harris Was Never ‘Border Czar,’ Experts Say, Despite Republican Claims” (Voice of America, July 24, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Media Suddenly Changes Its Tune on Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar’ — Despite Giving Her the Title” (The New York Post, July 24, 2024).

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Developments

On a party-line vote, the Republican-majority House of Representatives’ Committee on Rules approved the chamber’s consideration of a resolution “Strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”

The legislation claims that “on March 24, 2021, President Biden asked Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the administration’s border czar.” As numerous media have pointed out, this is fully inaccurate. Biden tasked Harris with the portfolio of addressing root causes of migration from Central America. (That is a role that Biden himself had taken on in the Obama administration in 2014, after the first major wave of child and family asylum-seeking migrants from Central America arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border.) Harris did not have larger border or migration policy responsibilities.

The resolution is being rushed to the floor just days after President Joe Biden decided not to seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Harris to run in his stead.

• Emily Brooks, “House Republicans Tee Up Vote Condemning Harris as ‘Border Czar’” (The Hill, July 23, 2024).
• “Acyn @Acyn on Twitter” (Twitter, July 23, 2024).
• Dan Gooding, “Immigration Group Says Kamala Harris Has Record to Fight Gop’s Criticism” (Newsweek, July 23, 2024).

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said, and New York Times reporter Hamed Aleaziz separately tweeted, that Border Patrol apprehended fewer than 1,500 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border on July 22. (Salazar said this was the fewest in a day since 2018, which is inaccurate: the last month during which apprehensions averaged less than 1,500 per day was July 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The Biden administration’s June 5, 2024 asylum restriction rule states that, should the weekly average of migrant apprehensions drop below 1,500 per day for 3 weeks, and should the average remain below 2,500, then U.S. border authorities will no longer automatically deny asylum access to people who cross between ports of entry to ask for protection. (The administration’s May 2023 rule, denying asylum to most who fail to seek it in another country through which they passed, would remain in effect.)

• Arturo Sanchez Jimenez, “Cruces Irregulares a Eu Registran la Mayor Baja en 6 Anos: Ken Salazar” (La Jornada (Mexico), July 23, 2024).
• “Hamed Aleaziz @Haleaziz on Twitter” (Twitter, July 23, 2024).

A “caravan” of migrants—estimates range from several hundred to about 2,000—has walked about 35-40 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border to the border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. A few have walked a bit further into Chiapas, more than 1,000 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

La Jornada reported it as “the fourth largest caravan so far this year.” The participants, mostly from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, say they have been waiting for months to secure appointments with Mexican migration authorities.

Many tell reporters that their goal is to reach a part of Mexico (from Mexico City northward) where they might be able to use the CBP One app to make appointments with U.S. authorities at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. Mexico has been more aggressive this year in blocking undocumented migrants’ efforts to travel northward.

• Raul Vera, “A Group of 2,000 Migrants Advance Through Southern Mexico in Hopes of Reaching the Us” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 23, 2024).
• Julio Navarro Cardenas, “Ante Desesperacion y Violencia, Nueva Caravana Migrante Sale de Tapachula, Chiapas” (Milenio (Mexico), July 24, 2024).

When the Texas state government arrests migrants on trespassing charges under its “Operation Lone Star,” counties must pay the cost of those who end up in county-run jails. El Paso County’s commissioners unanimously approved sending a grant application to the office of Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to reimburse $8 million in costs it has incurred in holding people arrested by Texas state forces. By the end of the year, Operation Lone Star incarcerations could end up costing El Paso’s Democratic Party-governed county $18 million.

• Julian Resendiz, “Operation Lone Star Arrests Overwhelming Border County” (Border Report, July 23, 2024).

Responding to some U.S. politicians, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said that any closure of the U.S.-Mexico border “will not be allowed, and Mexico will never have a closed border.”

• Oscar Rodriguez, ““Frontera Con Mexico Nunca Sera Cerrada; No se Permitira”: Barcena” (Milenio (Mexico), July 23, 2024).

“Dozens of makeshift ladders,” most made out of rebar, “mysteriously appeared in a dumpster” near the 30-foot border wall south of San Diego, Border Report reported.

• Salvador Rivera, “Dozens of Ladders Used to Get Migrants Over Wall Discovered in Dumpster Near Border” (Border Report, July 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Congressional Budget Office, an independent investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, published a report finding that recent years’ sharp increase in migration will reduce the U.S. budget deficit by $900 billion over the 2024-2034 period. The projection is based on estimates of the number of people paying taxes and receiving benefits ($1.2 trillion in tax revenue and $0.3 trillion in demand for benefits), and of the rising migration’s effect on interest rates and U.S. workers’ productivity.

• “Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy” (Congressional Budget Office, July 23, 2024).

CNN reported from the Tohono O’Odham Nation reservation, which straddles the border between Arizona and Sonora. Its people do not recognize the borderline and have long guarded their sovereignty, but border realities like migration, smuggling, and migrant deaths have placed stress both on the Nation’s autonomy and its uneasy relationship with Border Patrol and other U.S. authorities. That relationship grew more tense after agents shot and killed an O’Odham man, Raymond Mattia, outside his house in May 2023.

• Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Evelio Contreras, Norma Galeana, “How the Us-Mexico Border Brought Trouble to the Tohono o’odham Nation” (CNN, July 24, 2024).

At Foreign Policy, Gil Guerra of the Niskanen Center and Channing Lee of the Special Competitive Studies Project punched holes into claims that large numbers of spies or saboteurs might be embedded in the increased number of migrants from China arriving at the border. Instead, they argue, the United States should view as a moral victory that so many people from a competing power are choosing the U.S. political and economic model.

• Channing Lee, Gil Guerra, “Chinese Migrants Aren’t an Invading Army” (Niskanen Center, Special Competitive Studies Project, Foreign Policy, July 23, 2024).

On the Right

• Jason Hopkins, “America’s Border Crisis Could Get Whole Lot Worse Under Kamala Harris, Experts Say” (The Daily Signal, July 23, 2024).

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Developments

The border and migration issue has become a principal Republican line of attack against near-certain Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Messaging from GOP figures, including Donald Trump, refers to the Vice President as the Biden administration’s “Border Czar,” a term that the White House never used to refer to Harris’s role as its point person for addressing root causes of migration in northern Central America.

“Joe Biden has now endorsed and fully supports his ‘Borders Czar’ Kamala Harris to be the Democrat candidate for president,” tweeted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), adding, “I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border.” The term even appears in the title of an “emergency” resolution that the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership intends to move through the Rules Committee and onto the chamber’s floor in the next day or two.

• Saul Elbein, “Abbott Threatens to ‘Triple Razor Wire’ on Border After Harris Nod” (The Hill, July 22, 2024).
• “H. Res. 1371 – Strongly Condemning the Biden Administration and Its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, Failure to Secure the United States Border.” (Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives, July 22, 2024).

CBS News, Mother Jones and other media published analyses debunking the claim that Harris was ever in a position of developing or implementing border and migration policies beyond Central America. “In reality, the only role close to that of a ‘border czar’ under the Biden administration was held for only a few months by Roberta Jacobson, a longtime diplomat who served as coordinator for the Southwest border until April 2021,” recalled Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “The Facts About Kamala Harris’ Role on Immigration in the Biden Administration” (CBS News, July 22, 2024).
• Isabela Dias, “The Myth of Kamala Harris as “Border Czar”” (Mother Jones, July 22, 2024).

While Harris’s “root causes” effort is unlikely to have been the main cause, migration from northern Central America has declined sharply since the beginning of the Biden administration. CBP encounters with citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped from 58,421 per month in fiscal 2021 to 38,657 per month (34 percent fewer) in fiscal 2024. All other major nationalities, except Nicaragua and Brazil, have increased during that period.

Harris’s critics note that she only visited the U.S.-Mexico border once during her term, and that she had not spoken to two of the Border Patrol chiefs who served since 2021. This would appear to confirm that she has played little role in border policy.

• Ryan Chandler, “Kamala Harris’ Record on Immigration and the Border” (Border Report, July 22, 2024).
• Ali Bradley, “Last 2 Border Patrol Chiefs Say Harris Has Not Spoken With Them” (NewsNation, July 22, 2024).
• Zach Despart, “Texas Gop Leaders Paint Harris as a Disaster on Border Security” (The Texas Tribune, July 22, 2024).

Two crime-ridden Mexican border regions saw shakeups of state policing capabilities. The eastern border state of Tamaulipas announced improvements to the “General Center for Coordination, Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C5)” of its troubled state police force, with new vehicles and a helicopter. The western border state of Sonora took over control of the municipal police force in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, near Yuma.

• “Renuevan c5 de Reynosa; “Ahora Esta al Servicio de las y los Tamaulipecos”: Americo” (Brand Studio, Proceso (Mexico), July 22, 2024).
• “Decretan Mando Unico Policial en Slrc para Responder a Grupos Delictivos” (Riodoce (Sinaloa Mexico), July 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Under the Biden administration’s June asylum rule, Border Patrol agents no longer ask migrants if they fear deportation to their countries. Under what is called the “shout test,” asylum seekers must voluntarily speak up and hope that the agent listens to them. The practice of asking migrants whether they feared return dated back to 1997, the Associated Press reported. Some recently deported migrants told the AP’s Elliot Spagat that agents ignored their requests to seek asylum.

• Elliot Spagat, Behind Biden’s Asylum Halt: Migrants Must Say if They Fear Deportation, Not Wait to Be Asked (Associated Press, Associated Press, Sunday, July 21, 2024).

If Donald Trump is re-elected, his pledge to carry out mass deportations would be eased by dramatic recent improvements in surveillance and artificial intelligence capabilities, warned an analysis from Context (an outlet backed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation). While removing undocumented migrants is difficult, “making people look over their shoulder—creating an atmosphere of fear, he [Trump] can do that,” said Muzaffar Chisti of the Migration Policy Institute.

• Avi Asher-Schapiro, “Trump, Armed With Tech, Could Supercharge Deportations” (Thomson Reuters Foundation, Context, July 22, 2024).

Recent polling suggests that more than 10 percent of Venezuelans may try to emigrate if authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro wins or steals this Sunday’s presidential election, noted a Los Angeles Times column from Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

• Will Freeman, “Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro Could Lose a Landslide Election. But Will It Matter?” (Council on Foreign Relations, The Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2024).

“You can have good faith disagreements about immigration and migration and especially around the border without resorting to dehumanizing the migrants themselves and without trying to say that they are all here to destroy us or that they are some sort of existential threat to the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council in an interview with Documented.

• Fisayo Okare, “At the Democratic National Convention, How Will Democrats Respond to Republicans’ Inaccurate Message on Immigration?” (Documented, July 22, 2024).

“Immigrants today account for 13.8% of the U.S. population. This is a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970. However, the immigrant share of the population today remains below the record 14.8% in 1890,” noted an updated analysis from the Pew Research Center.

• Jeffrey S. Passel, Mohamad Moslimani, “Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants” (Pew Research Center, July 22, 2024).

On the Right

• Theo Wold, “The Great Immigration Experiment” (Claremont Institute, The American Conservative, July 22, 2024).

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Developments

Border Patrol apprehended an average of 1,650 migrants per day last week, CBS News reported. If the average drops below 1,500 per day, people who cross the border between ports of entry will once again be able to apply for asylum, under the Biden administration’s June rule curtailing asylum access. The right to seek protection for those who cross between the ports would be shut down again if the daily average were to rise above 2,500 per day.

If the current tempo were to sustain for an entire month, it would be the month with the fewest Border Patrol apprehensions since September 2020, late in the Trump administration.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Migrant Crossings Continue to Plunge, Nearing the Level That Would Lift Biden’s Border Crackdown” (CBS News, July 19, 2024).
• J. David Goodman, Miriam Jordan, “Amid Talk of Border Chaos, Crossings Have Sharply Declined” (The New York Times, July 20, 2024).

An American Immigration Council blog post recalled that the Biden rule is not the only reason why migration has dropped to its current relatively low level: Since January, Mexico has pursued a crackdown with the goal of “wearing out” migrants.

The scope of Mexico’s crackdown, which involves mass busing of non-Mexican migrants away from the U.S. border deep into Mexico, was laid out in a July fact sheet by the Mexico-based Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI) and a July report from two El Paso and Ciudad Juárez-based groups, the Hope Border Institute and Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA).

• Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “Why Are Border Crossings at Their Lowest Level in Four Years?” (American Immigration Council, July 19, 2024).

Panama’s recently inaugurated president, José Raúl Mulino, said that his government would only deport migrants from the Darién Gap if they agree to voluntary repatriation. This softens Mulino’s campaign pledge to halt Darién migration by flying migrants back to their home countries after they cross the 60-70 mile jungle region. The Biden administration pledged to help Panama fund these flights.

Panama’s border service counted 11,363 migrants crossing the Darién Gap during the first half of July, one of the lowest daily averages since late 2022.

• Alma Solis, “Panama President Says Repatriation of Migrants Crossing the Darien Gap Will Be Voluntary” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 18, 2024).

Several hundred migrants—some reports claim 2,000 or even 3,000—from many countries began walking north from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. They chose to start walking en masse, some told reporters, after Mexico’s migration agency (INM) refused to give them travel documents and Mexico’s refugee agency (COMAR) proved too slow to respond to their asylum applications.

Some told the Associated Press that they feel some urgency to get to the U.S. border before a possible second Donald Trump term, when pathways like the CBP One app would probably shut down.

The group is just arriving in the southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. No “migrant caravan” has reached the U.S. border even partially intact since early 2019.

• Edgar H. Clemente, “Hundreds of Migrants Leave Southern Mexico on Foot in a New Caravan Headed for the Us Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 22, 2024).
• “Unos 3.000 de Migrantes Parten en Nueva Caravana Desde la Frontera Sur de Mexico” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), July 21, 2024).
• Julio Navarro Cardenas, “Migrantes Llegan a Tapachula, Hidalgo; Continuaran su Camino a Eu” (Milenio (Mexico), July 21, 2024).

Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the outgoing chief of the National Guard Bureau, repeated earlier criticisms of the Texas state government’s large-scale deployment of guardsmen to the state’s border with Mexico. Hokanson argued that the long-term border mission is undermining the National Guard’s readiness to carry out more traditional military missions like warfighting.

• Steve Beynon, “‘At What Cost’: Guard Chief Argues Border Mission Is Getting in the Way of Warfighting” (Military.com, July 18, 2024).

Attorneys for Border Patrol agent Dustin Sato-Smith succeeded in moving a prosecution against him from California state court to federal court, where they argue that he will be immune from prosecution. In February 2023, while performing an abrupt U-turn to respond to a report of undocumented migrants nearby, Sato-Smith collided with an uninvolved U.S. citizen aboard a motorcycle, killing him. (Despite reporting requirements, CBP did not release information about the fatal crash.) His attorneys claim that, because he was performing his duties at the time of the crash, the federal court should grant Sato-Smith immunity under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

• Alex Riggins, “San Diego-Area Border Patrol Agent Claims Immunity From Prosecution in Fatal Crash” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 21, 2024).

“He’s trying to convince everybody what a wonderful job he does in running the country. Well, he doesn’t do a wonderful job,” said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, during Trump’s marathon July 18 Republican National Convention speech. Trump attacked Bukele—who admires the former U.S. president and has cultivated ties with key Republicans—for supposedly lowering El Salvador’s crime rate by “sending” his country’s criminals as migrants to the United States. While a small number of gang members are mixed in with the Salvadoran migrant population, no proof supports the claim that Bukele is deliberately exiling them to the United States.

• Isabela Dias, “Wait, Why Did Trump Take a Jab at The “Dictator” Conservatives Love Last Night?” (Mother Jones, July 19, 2024).

Calling Donald Trump “a man of intelligence and vision,” Mexico’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that he would write Trump to warn him, if he is elected, not to close the U.S.-Mexico border or blame migrants for cross-border drug trafficking.

• “Mexican President Calls Donald Trump ‘a Friend’ and Says He’ll Warn Him Against Closing Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 19, 2024).

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, visited Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, to discuss fentanyl interdiction with U.S. and Mexican authorities. Only about 2 percent of border-wide fentanyl gets seized in the south Texas region that Kaine visited.

• Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), “Kaine Meets With Law Enforcement, International Partners in Texas to Discuss Fentanyl Interdiction at the Southern Border” (U.S. Senate, July 19, 2024).

The July 19 Microsoft / CrowdStrike global software glitch paralyzed border ports of entry, forcing people to wait several hours to cross from Mexico into the United States.

• Salvador Rivera, “Microsoft Glitch Shuts Down Border Crossings, Causes Hours-Long Delays” (Border Report, July 19, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

By busing more than 120,000 migrants to Democratic Party-governed cities, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) reshaped migration patterns and drew national attention to the border and migration issue, a New York Times feature reported. Without the paid buses, it contends, Venezuelan migrants would have been more likely to join existing communities in Florida and Texas instead of coming to New York City.

The number of migrants aboard Texas-funded buses is a single-digit percentage of the more than 3 million people, mostly asylum seekers, released into the U.S. interior since 2022. The busing program has cost Texas over $230 million, the Times reported, which would add up to nearly $2,000 per passenger.

• Edgar Sandoval, J. David Goodman, Jeremy White, Keith Collins, “Bus by Bus, Texas’ Governor Changed Migration Across the U.S.” (The New York Times, July 20, 2024).

William Murillo of the Ecuadorian organization “1-800 Migrantes” told the Guayaquil daily El Universo that people migrating from Ecuador tend to follow at least four clandestine routes: by air to Panama and the Bahamas then by boat to Florida; overland to Colombia, then flying to Central America and overland through Mexico; overland through the treacherous Darién Gap, Central America, and Mexico; and by air to Panama then overland through Central America and Mexico.

• “Cinco Rutas, las Mas Frecuentes de los Migrantes para Llegar a Estados Unidos; La Tercera, la Mas Peligrosa” (El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), July 19, 2024).