Kamala Harris reiterates support for asylum restrictions and "consequences" for migrants at the border. Panama runs a 4th deportation flight. The CHNV humanitarian parole program is un-suspended.
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Developments
In a prime-time CNN interview alongside running mate Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, voiced support for stricter border enforcement and for addressing “root causes” of migration from Central America.
Harris reiterated strong backing for the “Border Act of 2024,” a bill that failed in the Senate in February after months of negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators. As it sought Republican buy-in, that bill included tougher provisions than Democrats would normally support, like severe limits on asylum access between ports of entry, more migrant detention capacity, and expenditure of Trump-era border wall money.
“I will make sure that it comes to my desk and I would sign it,” Harris said of the Border Act, recalling that Donald Trump pressured Republican senators to oppose the bill as it neared consideration.
“I believe there should be consequence” for crossing the border without authorization, Harris added. CNN interviewer Dana Bash compared that response to a moment in a 2020 Democratic primary debate when candidate Harris was among those who raised their hands indicating support for decriminalizing border crossings.
Introducing the border topic, Bash asked about the Biden administration’s June 2024 rule shutting down most asylum access between ports of entry, appearing to imply that this was an uncontroversial, common-sense step that they should have taken earlier: “Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?”
“After initially declaring the wall a ‘medieval vanity project’ in 2019 when she announced a run for president, Harris recently said she would seek to have hundreds of millions spent on the construction of the wall,” reads a comparison of Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s border-security positions at the conservative outlet NewsNation. Harris has not specifically said she would spend money on border wall-building, but in supporting the “Border Act”, she has backed a bill that—in one of several concessions to Republicans—would spend $650 million in previously appropriated funds on wall construction, enough to build about 26 miles.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) restarted registrations for the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, which had been suspended since the beginning of August due to potential fraud concerns. Since January 2023 this program has allowed up to a combined 30,000 citizens of these countries per month to apply for a two-year protected status in the United States, and to fly to U.S. airports instead of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. It has contributed into a sharp drop in unauthorized crossings of these countries’ citizens at the border.
Panama sent its second and third deportation flights in seven days, and fourth since August 20, of migrants apprehended in the Darién Gap. A flight carrying 30 Ecuadorian citizens—27 men and 3 women, 9 reportedly with criminal records—departed for Manta on Thursday evening, the first flight to Ecuador since Panama’s new government began increasing the flights’ tempo. It is the second flight to be funded by the U.S. government; Panama has paid for two others, the Associated Press reported.
A plane to Colombia, the third so far, appears to have departed on Friday morning with a reported 28 people aboard. That would make a total of 117 people deported since August 20. The flow of migrants through the Darién Gap is at its lowest point in over two years right now, but is still about 400 people per day.
DHS announced the allocation of a $380 million tranche of FEMA Shelter and Service funding to 50 nonprofits and state or local governments assisting migrants released from CBP custody.
A Texas state judge ruled that Team Brownsville, a short-term shelter that receives migrants released from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody, does not have to participate in a deposition demanded by Texas’s attorney-general, who has been carrying out a legal offensive against groups that assist migrants in the state. Judges have similarly slowed Ken Paxton’s (R) efforts so far against El Paso’s Annunciation House, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and the Houston-based immigrant rights defense group FIEL.
Searchers for disappeared victims of Mexico’s organized crime groups have found 14 sites with skeletal remains in the vicinity of Mexico’s northern border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, across from south Texas.
A former Alabama National Guard soldier, assigned in 2021 to a federal (not state) border-security mission in Texas, pleaded guilty in federal court to helping smugglers transport undocumented migrants.
Analyses and Feature Stories
WOLA has published a graphical commentary highlighting 12 trends happening right now at the U.S.-Mexico border and along the U.S.-bound migration route. It finds that overlapping crackdowns in Mexico and the United States have made asylum-seeking migration difficult, reducing numbers dramatically. The data indicate, however, that the reduction will be temporary, that the crackdowns are shutting out and bottlenecking many migrants who need protection, and that Texas’s separate crackdown has had little effect.
For the Christian publication Sojourners, writer Ken Chitwood visited Albergue Assabil, a Tijuana shelter for Muslim women founded in 2022.
Roll Call talked to former officials and security experts about how Donald Trump, if he wins, might use the U.S. military to carry out deportations and build up border security. Tom Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an enthusiastic Trump backer, raised the possibility of redeploying active soldiers from overseas to the U.S.-Mexico border.
At the Border Chronicle, Todd Miller recounted an August 14 Border Patrol vehicle stop in Arizona, during which an agent shut a filmmaker and an author, both Mexican-American, in the back of his truck while verifying their citizenship. They were accompanied by a local humanitarian worker, who is not Latino and was not asked for his identification.
Axios covered local Republican officials’ allegations that members of Venezuela’s “Tren de Aragua” criminal organization, believed to have arrived across the border in recent years, are “taking over apartment buildings” in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. Local police dispute those claims, calling the TdA influence “isolated.”
On the Right