Adam Isacson

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Developments

Smugglers abandoned four unaccompanied migrant children on an inflatable raft in the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas, Border Patrol reported.

• Billal Rahman, “Border Agents Rescue Four Migrant Children From Raft on Rio Grande“ (Newsweek, October 30, 2024).

CBP reported that a man whom officers shot and wounded at Nogales, Arizona’s DeConcini port of entry on October 16 had 3,140 rounds of AK-47-style rifle ammunition stashed in his vehicle’s spare tire.

• Paul Ingram, “Man Shot at Nogales Border Crossing Had 3k Rounds of Ammo Stashed in Spare Tire“ (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), October 30, 2024).

Fox News covered the Trump campaign’s pledge to take down billboards in Texas, posted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), reminding people with relatives in immigration custody that those relatives have recourse if they are being abused. Republican legislators have sought to defund and shut down OIDO, which was created in response to 2019 Democratic-led legislation.

• Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, “‘Coming Down’: Trump Vows to Dismantle Billboards Pushing Rights for Illegal Immigrants if He Wins“ (Fox News, October 30, 2024).

Texas’s state government has named the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization, a “tier 1” gang threat, alongside “notorious prison gangs the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia, as well as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, the Crips, the Bloods, and the Latin Kings,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

• Zacharia Washington, “What We Know About the Rise of Venezuelan Gang Activity in Texas“ (The Dallas Morning News, October 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Yesterday’s WOLA-organized discussion of state forces’ human rights abuse at the Texas-Mexico border, with experts and advocates from Human Rights Watch, Hope Border Institute, Eagle Pass Border Coalition, and Alliance San Diego, is viewable on YouTube. Border Report published highlights of the event.

• “Texas’s Operation Lone Star: Excessive Use of Force on the Borderline” (YouTube, October 30, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “Texas’ Border Takeover a Factor in Migrant, Us Citizen Deaths, Activists Say“ (Border Report, October 30, 2024).

Writing for Puente News Collaborative and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Alfredo Corchado profiled Arvin West, the sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, just east of El Paso. A prominent border hardliner, West has become disillusioned with the politicization of the national debate on border security and migration and now supports more pragmatic, local approaches.

• Alfredo Corchado, “A Lawman’s Change of Heart“ (Puente News Collaborative, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, October 30, 2024).

A detailed analysis by Lillian Perlmutter at Rolling Stone discussed the harder-line turn in the Biden administration’s border policies, including strict limits on asylum access. “In their attempt to find a message that resonates with the American public,” Perlmutter wrote, “Democrats have forced hundreds of thousands of migrants into potentially deadly situations.”

• Lillian Perlmutter, “Democrats Are, in Fact, Cracking Down at the Border“ (Rolling Stone, October 30, 2024).

At America: The Jesuit Review, David Agren covered the Mexican government’s undeclared but vigorous effort, launched at the beginning of the year, to block migrants attempting to transit Mexico’s territory and reroute many of them to the country’s south. Agren added that many people migrating in Mexico feel an urgency to obtain CBP One appointments before Donald Trump, if he wins the November 5 elections, terminates the program. Brian Strassburger, a Jesuit priest working in south Texas and Tamaulipas, Mexico, said that the wait for CBP One appointments is now often seven months for non-Mexican migrants and ten months for Mexicans.

• David Agren, “The Other Border Crisis: How Mexico Is Enforcing Migration Policies Ahead of the U.S. Election“ (America The Jesuit Review, October 31, 2024).

Reporting from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Agénce France Presse noted how the Biden administration’s restrictions on asylum between ports of entry have reduced unauthorized border crossings and channeled migrants into long waits for CBP One appointments.

• Herika Martinez, Sofia Miselem, “As Us Election Rhetoric Heats Up, Illegal Border Crossings Fall“ (Agence France Presse, Barron’s, October 31, 2024).

Reflecting on a recent visit to the Darién Gap in the Los Angeles Times, Human Rights Watch director Tirana Hassan called for more robust U.S. measures against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle, and to do much more to “uphold the rights of migrants and asylum seekers fleeing the crisis in Venezuela.” Hassan laments that instead, the Biden administration “has put Venezuelans in further danger and undercut their access to asylum.”

• Tirana Hassan, “What Venezuela’s Turn Away From Democracy Means for U.S. Migration“ (Human Rights Watch, The Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2024).

Data that the Cato Institute obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveals that the Trump administration “released nearly 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers,” often to clear detention space for asylum seekers arriving at the border. Cato’s David Bier noted that the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy, which the Trump administration launched in March 2020, “removed consequences for convicted criminals who crossed the border illegally, enabling them to try again and again.”

• David J. Bier, “New Data on Trump’s Border Security Record: Releasing Criminals to Jail Asylum Seekers“ (The Cato Institute, October 30, 2024).

Writing for Mother Jones, Isabela Dias covered immigrant rights defense groups’ scenario planning and preparations for responding to a possible Donald Trump victory in Tuesday’s elections. “Strategic litigation is only part of their calculus. Another huge component is community education and readiness.”

• Isabela Dias, “Immigrant Rights Advocates Are Preparing For “The Worst” Under Trump. Will It Be Enough?“ (Mother Jones, October 30, 2024).

At Washington Monthly, Bill Scher looked at the data and concluded that the Trump administration was more effective at curbing legal migration than reducing unauthorized migration to the United States.

• Bill Scher, “Trump Won’t Tell You How He Takes Aim at Legal Immigration“ (Washington Monthly, October 31, 2024).

Reporting from North Carolina, the Australian network ABC concluded that Republican political candidates are having some success spreading the inaccurate belief that migrants bring fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border. (More than 90 percent is seized from vehicles, and more than 80 percent of those arrested at ports of entry are U.S. citizens.)

• Adam Harvey, Rahni Sadler, “‘Fentanyl Does Not Discriminate’ Who It Kills but Trump Is Conflating It With Migration to Win Votes“ (ABC (Australia), October 31, 2024).

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Developments

Associated Press reporter María Verza reported from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, where she found “migrants continue pouring into Mexico” but organized crime—which has vastly ramped up ransom kidnappings in the area—is doing more to “manage the flow” of migrants than Mexican authorities. Released kidnap victims say that criminals are holding about 500 people at a time at a ranch near the border town of Ciudad Hidalgo; they stamp the skin of those who pay for their release, while those who cannot pay are often sexually assaulted.

• Maria Verza, “How Mexican Cartels Manage the Flow of Migrants on Their Way to the Us Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 30, 2024).

At Mexico’s northern border, the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Norte reported on a proliferation of “safe houses” where smugglers or kidnappers hold migrants, “packing them in like sardines.” In recent years, the report found, these houses have become more common in more central urban neighborhoods, not just on the city’s outskirts.

• Teofilo Alvarado, “Las Casas del Horror en Juarez” (Norte (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), October 29, 2024).

Texas’s state government has made a second large land purchase along the border so that it might build border barriers on the properties. Following news yesterday of the purchase of a 1,400-acre ranch along the border in Starr County, in the southern part of the state, the Texas General Land Office revealed that it has bought the 353,785-acre Brewster Ranch, bordering Big Bend National Park. “The ranch had been listed for $245,678,330,” according to the Land Report.

• Eric o’keefe, “Texas General Land Office Buys 353,785-Acre Brewster Ranch” (The Land Report, October 29, 2024).
• Sandra Sanchez, “State Buys South Texas Ranch to Build Its Own Border Wall” (Border Report, October 29, 2024).

Cochise County, a border county in southeast Arizona, held a dedication ceremony for a new multi-million-dollar “Border Operations Center” to support local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. At the ceremony, Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, criticized “the federal government’s failure to address” border issues.

• Cameron Arcand, “Cochise County Gets New Border Operations Center” (The Center Square, October 29, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

WOLA, together with Alliance San Diego, the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, Hope Border Institute, and Human Rights Watch, is hosting a webinar about human rights and state border security forces’ use of force along the borderline in Texas. It starts at 5:00 Eastern today, and registration is open.

• “Texas’s Operation Lone Star: Abuse on the Borderline” (WOLA, October 30, 2024).

Young people unable to find decent employment, many of them well educated, are heavily represented in the population of Colombian citizens emigrating, according to a report from Colombia’s La Silla Vacía. Colombia was the number-six nationality of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2024. The article also cites a recent worsening of citizen security as a reason for Colombians choosing to leave.

• Michael Rendon Vera, “Violencia, Incertidumbre y Mas Ingresos Impulsan un Creciente Exodo de Colombianos” (La Silla Vacia (Colombia), October 30, 2024).

Border Report contrasted the views of conservatives who want the State Department to push countries along the migration route to do more to block people from coming to the United States, with the views of rights advocates who contend that the solution lies in expanding legal pathways for safer migration, including through reform of U.S. immigration laws.

• Julian Resendiz, “State Department Urged to Step Up Role in Stopping Illegal Migration” (Border Report, October 29, 2024).

On the Right

• Tara Mergener, “Cbn Exclusive: Border Agent Speaks Out on Ongoing Southern Border Crisis” (CBN News, October 29, 2024).

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Developments

Mexico’s army reported seizing over 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds) of cocaine in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, a border town near Yuma, Arizona. This one seizure is equivalent to one-fifteenth of all cocaine that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported seizing at the border throughout fiscal 2024 (30,383 pounds, or 13,781 kilograms).

• Juan Carlos Cartas, “¡Fuerte Golpe al Narco! Aseguran Mas de 900 Kg de Cocaina en San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora“ (Proyecto Puente (Mexico), October 28, 2024).

On Friday, hospitals in Texas must begin collecting information about their patients’ citizenship status, under an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

• Ryan Chandler, “Texas Hospitals to Start Checking Citizenship Status This Week“ (Border Report, October 28, 2024).

Abbott’s state government has purchased a 1,400-acre ranch along the border in Starr County, in the southern part of Texas, where it plans to build a new length of border wall, Fox News reported.

• Adam Shaw, “‘Shut It Down’: Red State Makes Massive Land Buy to Ramp Up Border Wall Efforts Amid Migrant Surge“ (Fox News, October 28, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Reuters reported on Mexico’s policy, begun in January, of blocking in-transit migrants and systematically transporting many to the country’s south. The undeclared but vigorous effort is a central reason why the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border is down during the 2024 U.S. election campaign. Reuters revealed that Mexico’s migration authority has paid over $65 million to one charter bus company since last year.

• Diego Ore, Jose Luis Gonzalez, Laura Gottesdiener, Ted Hesson, “How Mexico’s Migrant Crackdown Influences the U.S. Election“ (Reuters, Reuters, October 28, 2024).

A New York Times analysis concluded that regardless of who wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election, curbs on the right to access asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border are likely to remain in place or become even stiffer. As a result, many asylum seekers in North America and Europe “are finding themselves increasingly stranded in desperate, unsafe conditions like camps or crowded boats.”

• Hamed Aleaziz, Jazmine Ulloa, “Under Trump or Harris, U.S. Asylum Curbs Are Likely to Endure“ (The New York Times, October 28, 2024).

At Vox, Nicole Narea evaluated Donald Trump’s oft-repeated campaign promise by examining past attempts at “mass deportation” and past challenges to the overuse of wartime powers.

• Nicole Narea, “Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan: Would It Actually Work?“ (Vox, October 29, 2024).

“Fearmongering over the threat that illegal immigration poses to native-born white women is misleading at best,” David Kirkpatrick wrote at the New Yorker. Still, Republican candidates and Fox News are winning over some voters in close states by amplifying cases like the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly by a man who recently migrated from Venezuela.

• David D. Kirkpatrick, “Will Laken Riley’s Murder Tip Georgia?“ (The New Yorker, October 29, 2024).

Anti-immigrant attitudes could also affect the election outcome in Wisconsin, a swing state where many migrants have settled in response to unmet labor needs, Alfredo Corchado and Dudley Althaus wrote at the San Antonio Express-News. However, they find that the state’s small Latino vote could counteract those attitudes.

• Alfredo Corchado, Dudley Althaus, “Immigration Could Shift Presidential Vote in Wisconsin, 1,000 Miles From Border“ (The San Antonio Express-News, October 28, 2024).

Similarly, the New York Times looked at how candidates in New York state have sought to gain an electoral advantage from a large increase in migrant arrivals to New York City during the Biden administration.

• Luis Ferre-Sadurni, “How New York City’s Migrant Crisis Became a Potent Campaign Issue“ (The New York Times, October 28, 2024).

At Caracas Chronicles, Carlos Rodríguez López wrote about how “unsustained allegations about an exponential rise of violent crime brought by Venezuelan gangs” have made Venezuelan migrants a “political football” in the 2024 election campaign. Only 35 percent of people of Venezuelan origin in the United States have U.S. citizenship, Rodríguez López points out: many are recent arrivals, and most cannot vote.

• Carlos Rodriguez Lopez, “Venezuelans: The Political Football of the U.S. Election“ (Caracas Chronicles, October 28, 2024).
• Tom Leonard, “How ‘la Barbie’ and Her Venezuelan Thugs Could Swing the Us Election“ (The Daily Mail (UK), October 28, 2024).

The New York Times’s Miriam Jordan told the story of José, a sixth-grader living with his parents in Houston, whom Border Patrol agents had separated from his family in May 2018, at the height of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. “I don’t trust anybody,” the boy said. “I just trust my mom and dad.”

• Miriam Jordan, “He Was 5 When a Trump Immigration Policy Separated His Family. He Hasn’t Forgotten.“ (The New York Times, October 28, 2024).

On the Right

• Elizabeth Elkind, Matteo Cina, “Scalise Details Trump’s Vision on Securing Border in First 100 Days“ (Fox News, October 28, 2024).
• Chris Nesi, Jennie Taer, “Kamala Harris’ Grim Border Czar Legacy: 2,700 Migrants Who Died Crossing Into Us“ (The New York Post, October 28, 2024).
• Benedict Smith, Ben Butcher, “The True Scale of Migrant Crossings Under Kamala Harris Revealed“ (The Telegraph (UK), October 28, 2024).
• Brandon Judd, “Congress Must Act: America’s Safety Hinges on Border Security, Not Presidential Promises“ (Newsweek, October 28, 2024).

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Developments

Panama’s president issued a decree establishing fines of $300 to as much as $5,000 for people who enter the country irregularly through the border with Colombia: the Darién Gap jungle route that nearly 800,000 migrants have traversed since 2023. The fine may be adjusted according to migrants’ state of “vulnerability.” Those who do not pay may be prohibited from moving on to Costa Rica and subject to deportation.

EFE reported that “as of October 13, 274,444 irregular travelers have arrived in Panama through the jungle.” That means 11,148 people migrated through the Darién during those 13 days, or 858 per day. That is a very slight increase over the 837 per day reported in September.

• Henry Cardenas P., “Panama Anuncia Multas a Migrantes Que Ingresen de Forma Irregular al Pais“ (La Prensa (Panama), October 26, 2024).
• “Panama Multara a Extranjeros Que Entren Irregularmente al Pais por la Frontera Con Colombia“ (EFE, Infobae, October 26, 2024).

The human rights ombudsmen’s offices of Colombia and Panama signed a “letter of binational understanding” pledging increased cooperation on humanitarian and human rights monitoring in the Darién Gap region, where large but untold numbers of migrants perish or are assaulted, robbed, and raped by criminal groups.

• “Firma de Carta de Entendimiento Binacional Entre las Defensorias del Pueblo de Colombia y Panama Sobre Migracion y Derechos Humanos“ (Defensoria del Pueblo (Government of Colombia), October 25, 2024).

A Border Patrol vehicle pursuit southeast of San Diego ended with a crash, killing two citizens of Mexico aboard, on October 22.

• “Migrants Killed After Being Ejected From Smuggling Vehicle“ (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, October 25, 2024).
• Jayne Yutig, “Cbp: 2 Suspects Killed in Pursuit Crash on Sr-905 Involving Border Patrol Agents“ (KFMB San Diego, msn.com, October 25, 2024).

The population of Venezuelan migrants in Mexico City—many awaiting CBP One appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border—may have increased 13-fold from 2021 to 2023, judging from a municipal welfare agency’s count of the number of people served, Milenio reported. Many are in the central district of Cuauhtémoc, finding work paying about $60-120 per week.

• Claudia Solera, “Aumentan Numero Venezolanos Migrantes en Cdmx; Se Concentran en Cdmx“ (Milenio (Mexico), October 27, 2024).

In Mexico’s border state of Chihuahua, the state government’s security department established a police task force to track the activities of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan organized crime group. At the federal level, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, said on October 25 that while security forces have arrested some Tren de Aragua members, “we do not have this group registered as the main generator of violence.”

• Blanca Elizabeth Carmona, “Crea Grupo Especial para Vigilar ‘Tren de Aragua’ en Chihuahua“ (Milenio (Mexico), October 28, 2024).
• “Mexico Nego Que el Tren de Aragua Sea un Importante Generador de Violencia en Ese Pais“ (Tal Cual (Venezuela), October 25, 2024).

Leonard Darnell George, a CBP officer found guilty of taking bribes to allow drugs to cross the border through California ports of entry, was sentenced to 23 years in prison. “Prosecutors allege George was so entrenched with the drug traffickers that one trafficking associate took a selfie photograph of himself wearing George’s CBP uniform jacket,” reported San Diego’s NBC affiliate.

• “Ex-Cbp Officer Sentenced for Taking Bribes to Let Drugs Across Us-Mexico Border“ (City News Service, NBC San Diego, October 25, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

CBS News’s 60 Minutes program aired a segment about Republican candidate Donald Trump’s’ plan to carry out a mass deportation campaign if elected. Tom Homan, who was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s presidency, said that separating migrant families “needs to be considered, absolutely.”

CBS looked at the last time the U.S. government carried out mass sweeps to deport people–during the Eisenhower administration, an example that Trump cites often–and found that “this short-term show-of-force did not stop the problem.”

• Cecilia Vega, “Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan for Undocumented Immigrants Could Cost Billions a Year“ (CBS News, October 27, 2024).
• Brit Mccandless Farmer, “The Blueprint of Trump’s Deportation Plan: A Questionable Approach by Eisenhower“ (CBS News, October 27, 2024).

The Associated Press reported that some children separated from their parents by the Trump administration are telling their painful stories in social media videos and pro-Kamala Harris campaign events. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt recalled that as many as 1,000 families remain separated over six years later.

• Rebecca Santana, “Migrant Families Separated Under Trump Still Feel the Fallout and They Fear His Return to Office“ (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 26, 2024).

At the New York Review of Books, John Washington profiled a woman who fled Guatemala but is stranded in the border city of Nogales, Mexico, after being refused an opportunity to seek asylum in the United States due to Biden administration restrictions. She and her son have been kidnapped twice by criminal groups in Mexico.

• John Washington, “‘We Got Kidnapped Again’“ (The New York Review of Books, October 25, 2024).

At Foreign Affairs, veteran journalist Julia Preston found that, despite the Democratic candidate’s rightward turn on border security and immigration policy, Kamala Harris and the much harder-line Donald Trump offer policy choices that differ in “stark and consequential” ways.

• Julia Preston, “The Real Choice on Immigration“ (Foreign Affairs, October 25, 2024).

Eurasia Review spoke to Yale University sociologist Ángel Escamilla García, whose interviews with unaccompanied Central American minor children migrating through Mexico showed a significant level of knowledge of U.S. immigration law. A 17-year-old girl from Honduras said she decided not to reveal being raped during the journey “after learning that rape and other physical violence migrants suffer en route to the United States is irrelevant to their asylum applications.”

• “Risky Choices: How Us Laws Affect Migrant Children’s Journeys to Border“ (Eurasia Review, October 28, 2024).

On the Right

• Michael Lee, “Caravan Descending on Border Could Preview Migrant Rush to Sneak Into Us if Trump Wins Election“ (Fox News, October 25, 2024).
• Anna Giaritelli, “Border Patrol Union: Harris in Texas to ‘Party Like a Fool’ Instead of Apologizing for Migrant Crime“ (The Washington Examiner, October 25, 2024).

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Developments

At an Arizona rally, Republican candidate Donald Trump said that policies admitting migrants have made the United States “a garbage can for the world.”

• Marisa Iati, Meryl Kornfield, “Trump Compares Undocumented Migrants to Trash at Insult-Fueled Rallies“ (The Washington Post, October 25, 2024).

Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, said that he hopes to identify a third country or countries that would be willing to accept Venezuelan citizens whom Panama would deport after they cross the treacherous Darién Gap migration route. The Homeland Security attaché in the U.S. embassy to Panama told EFE that with U.S. support, air deportations of Venezuelans from the Darién may begin “in the next days, weeks at the latest.” Neither official named any possible third countries.

• “Panama Espera Que un Tercer Pais Pueda Acoger a los Migrantes Venezolanos Deportados“ (EFE, Tal Cual (Venezuela), October 24, 2024).

Panama has run nearly 20 deportation flights since early August, most of them to Colombia and Ecuador. EFE cited a U.S. embassy statement noting that the number of Colombians and Ecuadorians transiting the Darién Gap has fallen by 65 percent and 92 percent, respectively, since the flights began. (Migration from Venezuela, where the government has refused to recognize an apparent opposition victory in July 28 elections, rose 69 percent in the Darién from August to September.)

• Moncho Torres, “Eeuu: “En los Proximos Dias, Semanas”, Panama Podria Deportar Venezolanos a un Tercer Pais“ (EFE, Swissinfo.ch, October 24, 2024).

The South China Morning Post noted a 40 percent drop in border encounters with migrants from China from June to September, according to data reported by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Beyond the Biden administration’s June asylum restrictions, the article noted that “in July, Ecuador suspended its visa-free program for Chinese travelers.” Ecuador had been the principal point of arrival on the Latin American mainland for Chinese citizens arriving by air, most of whom then traversed the Darién Gap.

• Bochen Han, “Number of Chinese Migrants at Us-Mexico Border Drops to Lowest Count of Year“ (South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), October 25, 2024).

The Honduran Congress is considering legislation that would permanently repeal a $240 fine charged to undocumented migrants seeking to transit Honduras, in exchange for permission to remain briefly in the country. Since 2022, Honduras has waived this fee to encourage migrants to register with the government, which allows them to board public buses instead of turning to smugglers. The Congress must renew the waiver periodically; it next expires on December 31.

• Breidy Hernandez, “Urgente Revision de la Ley de Migracion en Honduras: ¿se Acabara la Amnistia Migratoria?“ (Criterio (Honduras), October 24, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

ProPublica published a deeply reported account from Whitewater, Wisconsin, a town that became a political flashpoint after several hundred Nicaraguan immigrants began to settle there, drawn by nearby food processing facilities in need of low-wage labor.

• Maryam Jameel, Melissa Sanchez, “What Happened in Whitewater“ (ProPublica, October 24, 2024).

“By mid-2024, more than 20.3 million forcibly displaced and stateless people were hosted in the Americas,” reads a new “Americas Factsheet” from UNHCR, “including 5.8 million refugees and asylum-seekers, 8.1 million internally displaced persons, and 5.8 million other people in need of international protection.”

• “Americas Factsheet | October 2024“ (UN Refugee Agency, October 24, 2024).

By allowing states to carry out their own independent immigration policies, Texas’s SB4 law criminalizing border crossings could “upend immigration enforcement nationwide” if courts uphold the Texan state government’s argument that migrants constitute an “invasion,” Alejandro Serrano wrote at the Texas Tribune.

• Alejandro Serrano, “If It Survives in Court, Texas’ Immigration Law Could Upend Immigration Enforcement Nationwide“ (The Texas Tribune, October 24, 2024).

At Vox, Christian Paz pushed back on poll data showing over half of U.S. respondents favor a “mass deportation” campaign, like Donald Trump has been proposing. Paz pointed out that pollsters’ questions fail to capture the complexity or the real-life consequences of such a campaign.

• Christian Paz, “Polls Say Voters Back “Mass Deportation.” That’s Misleading.“ (Vox, October 25, 2024).

“Keeping migrants stuck in southern Mexico–and points further south–has been a perpetual U.S. objective,” write three reporters for the Daily Signal covering Mexico’s stepped-up 2024 policy of doing precisely that by busing several thousand migrants per month from the country’s north to southern cities like Villahermosa, Tabasco.

• David Agren, Kellen Mcgovern Jones, Virginia Allen, “With Its Control of Migrant Flow, Mexico Seeks to Play Key Role in Us Election“ (The Daily Signal, October 25, 2024).

Jenn Budd, whose book Against the Wall recounts a traumatic experience as a former Border Patrol agent, has compiled a database of agents who have been arrested. “This data is an undercount,” Budd wrote at her site.

• Jenn Budd, “Border Patrol Agents Committing Crimes.“ (Jenn Budd, October 24, 2024).

Border Report published an overview of electoral matchups in House of Representatives districts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Two—one in New Mexico and one in Arizona—are rated as “toss-ups” by the Cook Political Report.

• Fernie Ortiz, “Border Report Live: Border Races Key to Taking House“ (Border Report, October 25, 2024).

At Inside Climate News, Martha Pskowski covered the dwindling Rio Grande, the river that serves as the border between Texas and Mexico. The river’s bed is completely dry along about 200 miles of west Texas.

• Martha Pskowski, “Holding Out Hope on the Drying Rio Grande“ (Inside Climate News, October 24, 2024).

On the Right

• “Quiet Amnesty: How the Biden-Harris Administration Uses the Nation’s Immigration Courts to Advance an Open-Borders Agenda“ (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, October 24, 2024).

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Developments

The federal judiciary’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court’s earlier ruling that Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) practice of “metering” asylum seekers at official border crossings is illegal. The term refers to stationing officers at the crossings’ borderline to turn back people without U.S. documentation, preventing them from setting foot on U.S. soil and asking for protection, while allowing only a small number of asylum seekers to access ports of entry each day.

The appeals court judges’ 2-1 decision determined, in the written opinion of Judge Michelle Friedland, that “a noncitizen who presents herself to a border official at a port of entry has arrived in the United States… whether she is standing just at the edge of the port of entry or somewhere within it.”

U.S. law states that a person physically present in the United States has the right to ask for asylum if they fear their life or freedom would be in danger upon return to their country. “You are not breaking the law by seeking asylum at a port of entry,” the Trump administration’s Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, tweeted in June 2018, at the height of that year’s family separations crisis. “Metering,” however, has strictly limited asylum seekers’ ability to access ports of entry.

The decision striking down “metering” caps a seven-year legal battle led by the San Diego and Tijuana-based Al Otro Lado, along with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the American Immigration Council, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Democracy Forward, along with the law firms Mayer Brown and Vinson and Elkins.

CBP officially rescinded the metering policy in 2021. The Ninth Circuit’s October 23 decision does not appear to affect the Biden administration’s current policy of turning away nearly all asylum seekers who show up to ports of entry without having secured one of 1,450 daily appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app. A May 2024 Human Rights Watch report called this “digital metering.” Organizations involved in the “metering” case have filed a new lawsuit challenging turnbacks of asylum seekers without CBP One appointments.

• “Ninth Circuit Upholds Rights of Asylum Seekers, Rules “Metering” Turnbacks Unlawful“ (Center for Constitutional Rights, October 23, 2024).
• Edvard Pettersson, “‘Metering’ of Asylum-Seekers at Border Ruled Illegal by Ninth Circuit“ (Courthouse News, October 23, 2024).
• Daniel Wiessner, “Us Court Says ‘Metering’ Policy Limiting Asylum Applications Is Illegal“ (Reuters, Reuters, October 23, 2024).
• “Al Otro Lado @alotrolado_org on Twitter“ (Twitter, October 23, 2024).

Border Report and the Arizona Daily Star covered the fiscal year 2024 migration and border enforcement statistics that CBP published on October 22. Border Report noted that the past few months’ drop in Border Patrol migrant apprehensions could see some reversals amid rising migration in Panama’s Darién Gap region and reports of migrant “caravans” forming in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. The Daily Star noted that Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona sector saw the most migration for much of the year, though numbers have dropped sharply along with the Biden administration’s June asylum restrictions, and that fentanyl seizures declined in fiscal 2024 for the first time since the drug began appearing in the mid-2010s.

• Julian Resendiz, “El Paso, Tucson, San Diego Lead Nation in Migrant Encounters“ (Border Report, October 23, 2024).
• Emily Bregel, “Migrant Arrests Outside Ports Dropped 25% on U.S.-Mexico Border This Year“ (The Arizona Daily Star, October 23, 2024).

A “caravan” numbering perhaps 700 migrants, which departed Mexico’s far south at the beginning of the month, is walking in the southern state of Oaxaca, adjacent to the country’s southern border state of Chiapas. A Venezuelan man told the daily Milenio he worries that the possibility of securing CBP One appointments will end if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the November 5 U.S. election.

• Ramon Bragana, “Caravana Migrante “Rey de Reyes” Avanza Hacia Veracruz Desde Oaxaca“ (Milenio (Mexico), October 23, 2024).

Mexican authorities reported rescuing nine migrants from India, Nepal, and Bangladesh whom a criminal group had kidnapped for ransom in the southern border zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. They reported no arrests of kidnappers.

• Jhonatan Gonzalez, “Tras Operativo, Liberan a Migrantes Retenidos en Tapachula, Chiapas“ (Milenio (Mexico), October 23, 2024).

Tapachula now leads all Mexican cities in perceptions of citizen insecurity, according to a survey from the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Ninety-two percent of Tapachula residents told surveyors that they fear crime. Chiapas, a border state through which large numbers of drugs and people are smuggled and trafficked, has experienced a sharp rise in organized crime violence over the past year.

The city’s mayor told EFE that Tapachula “concentrates 60 percent of the migrants in Mexico”; this estimate may be high, but the number of migrants lacking Mexican documentation and forced to wait there is very large.

• “Tapachula Es el Municipio Con Mayor Percepcion de Inseguridad de Mexico“ (EFE, Prensa Libre (Guatemala), October 23, 2024).

A CBP officer faces aggravated assault charges after he fired his weapon 11 times while off duty in an apparent road rage incident on a highway on-ramp in El Paso, Border Report reported.

• Melissa Luna, “Documents: Cbp Officer Fires Weapon 11 Times During Road Rage Incident on Border Highway“ (Border Report, October 23, 2024).

Bloomberg Law reported on Donald Trump’s intent to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for many migrants in the United States whom the program currently protects from deportation.

• Andrew Kreighbaum, “Trump Threatens Temporary Immigration Shield Soaring Under Biden“ (Bloomberg Law, October 23, 2024).

Peru’s government has added new restrictions on the approximately 1.54 million Venezuelan citizens residing in the country. These include new documentation requirements for employment and controls on financial remittances. The measures could reduce the number of Venezuelans who consider themselves “firmly settled” in the South American nation, potentially leading some to migrate elsewhere, including to the United States.

• “Mas Restricciones para los Migrantes Venezolanos en Peru“ (Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), October 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

At his Substack newsletter, the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh published a detailed rebuttal of claims that migrants in the United States are committing crimes at a greater rate than native-born U.S. citizens. Arrest and conviction data indicate otherwise.

• Alex Nowrasteh, “Yes, You’re Still Imagining a Migrant Crime Spree“ (Alex Nowrasteh’s Deep Dives, October 23, 2024).

The UN Refugee Agency published its annual report for Mexico operations in 2023. Among findings are that nearly 400 mostly charity-run migrant shelters operate in the country, and that over 600 companies have committed to employing refugees inside Mexico.

• “UNHCR Mexico Annual Report 2023“ (UN Refugee Agency, October 23, 2024).

Iowa Public Radio, reporting from Iowa; Gothamist, reporting from Long Island, New York; and Politico, reporting from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, illustrated how the border security and migration debate is affecting congressional campaigns, particularly in swing districts, far from the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Katarina Sostaric, “How Iowans Running for Congress Are Talking About Immigration and the Border“ (Iowa Public Radio, October 23, 2024).
• Jon Campbell, “Outside the City, Democrats and Republicans Run on Outcry Over Migrants in Nyc“ (Gothamist, October 23, 2024).
• “This Race Will Test Dems’ Message on Immigration — Even Though It’s Nowhere Near the Border“ (Politico, October 23, 2024).

Reporting from the border town of Douglas, Arizona, Agénce France Presse echoed residents’ exasperation with politicians from elsewhere falsely portraying border communities as dangerous places in crisis.

• Romain Fonsegrives, “At Us Border, Frustration Over Immigration as Political Football“ (Agence France Presse, Barron’s, October 23, 2024).

On the Right

• David Agren, Kellen Mcgovern Jones, Virginia Allen, “Lost in the Move: When Children Cross Border, Some Disappear Into Darkness“ (The Daily Signal, October 24, 2024).
• Todd Bensman, “Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants Are Being Held in Southern Mexico Until Us Election Day — and Are Eager to Rush Border“ (Center for Immigration Studies, The New York Post, October 23, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Border Agents Caught 300 Migrants With Terror Ties, Including Isis — and It’s Still ‘Incredibly Easy’ for Them to Enter Us: Sources“ (The New York Post, October 23, 2024).

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Developments

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border during September, which was also the final month of the U.S. government’s 2024 fiscal year. Among key findings:

• Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants between ports of entry dropped 25 percent from 2023 to 2024 (from 2,045,838 to 1,530,523).
• Migrants who entered CBP custody at ports of entry, most with CBP One appointments, increased 41 percent from 2023 to 2024 (429,831 to 604,482). CBP had increased appointments to their current level of 1,450 per day in June 2023, near the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
• Combining Border Patrol and port-of-entry encounters, the nationalities most frequently encountered at the border in 2024 were Mexico (-9% from 2023), Venezuela (-2%), Guatemala (-7%), Cuba (+6%), Honduras (-34%), Colombia (-20%), Ecuador (+5%), Haiti (+16%), El Salvador (-12%), and China (+57%)
• 38 percent of migrants encountered in 2024 were members of family units, and another 5 percent were unaccompanied children. This is similar to 2023 (33 percent and 6 percent, respectively).
• In September, Border Patrol apprehended 53,858 people between ports of entry. That is similar to July and August, slightly less than September 2020 when Donald Trump was president during the pandemic, and 78 percent less than the record-setting month of December 2023. The Biden administration’s June asylum restrictions and a crackdown in Mexico continue to suppress migration levels.
• “Overall, southwest border deaths were down 30% comparing the fourth quarter of last fiscal year to this fiscal year,” CBP reported, without offering aggregate numbers.
• Seizures of fentanyl fell for the first time since the drug began appearing. CBP seized 21,148 pounds of the potent opioid in 2024, down from 26,718 pounds in 2023 (-26%). Similar to past years, 86 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at border ports of entry. Of the remaining 14 percent seized by Border Patrol, 4 percent was seized from vehicles at the agency’s interior checkpoints.
• Seizures of cocaine increased 10 percent and methamphetamine increased 30 percent. Heroin fell 21 percent and marijuana 8 percent.
  
• “Cbp Releases September 2024 Monthly Update“ (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, October 22, 2024).
• Rafael Bernal, “September Border Patrol Encounters Lowest Since the Pandemic“ (The Hill, October 22, 2024).
• Dan Gooding, “Illegal Border Crossings Keep Falling as Election Day Grows Closer“ (Newsweek, October 22, 2024).
• Elliot Spagat, “Border Arrests Fall in September in Last Monthly Gauge Before Us Elections“ (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 22, 2024).

“We’ve reached almost 20 flights in 3 months, trying to discourage people from” migration through the Darién Gap region, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, told reporters during a visit to France. Mulino was referring to stepped-up deportation flights being carried out with U.S. support. As a result, the Panamanian president added, migration through the Darién “has gone down (by around 20% so far this year compared to 2023), but my concern is the worsening of the crisis in Venezuela,” EFE reported.

• “Mulino: La Crisis Migratoria del Darien Es “Un Problema de Estados Unidos”“ (EFE, Swissinfo.ch, October 22, 2024).

NBC News obtained Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data indicating that the Department has identified about 600 people in the United States with possible ties to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization. Of those, about 100 are considered “confirmed members of the gang.” As about 600,000 citizens of Venezuela have been released into the United States in the 2020s, the DHS list covers perhaps 0.1 percent of that population.

• Julia Ainsley, “Dhs Has Identified More Than 600 Migrants With Possible Ties to Venezuelan Gang“ (NBC News, October 22, 2024).
• David Von Drehle, “Venezuelan Gangs Terrorizing My Hometown? This I Had to See.“ (The Washington Post, October 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A week from today (Wednesday, October 30, 5:00 Eastern), join WOLA, Alliance San Diego, the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, Hope Border Institute, and Human Rights Watch for an online discussion of excessive use of force by Texas state National Guard and police personnel on the borderline.

• “Texas’s Operation Lone Star: Abuse on the Borderline“ (WOLA, October 30, 2024).

The Migration Policy Institute published a study of migration trends at the border, coinciding with CBP’s release of September and fiscal 2024 data. The analysis finds that the drop in migration results from the Biden administration’s combination of asylum curbs, encouragement of other countries’ enforcement, and expansion of lawful migration pathways. It concludes that the migration reduction’s long-term persistence is impossible to predict given several factors, many beyond the Biden administration’s control.

• Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, “With New Strategies at and Beyond the U.S. Border, Migrant Encounters Plunge“ (Migration Policy Institute, October 22, 2024).

A group of investigative journalism outlets published a report about “Border 911,” a non-profit led by Tom Homan, who served as acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director during the Trump administration. The report alleges that Homan’s group, linked to “dark money” efforts and border security contracting, uses disinformation about immigration, particularly the notion that migrants and asylum seekers constitute an “invasion,” to build political support for far-right policies and to undermine electoral processes.

• Francesca D’Annunzio, Jack Sapoch, Maria Polletta, Melissa del Bosque, Monica Camacho, “Border 911: The Misinformation Network Profiting Off the ‘Invasion’ Narrative“ (Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Lighthouse Reports, Palabra, Puente News Collaborative, Texas Observer, The Texas Observer, October 22, 2024).

If Donald Trump is elected, his promised “mass deportation” campaign would face fewer obstacles than during his first term, argued a USA Today analysis. It reported a poll finding 45 percent of respondents supporting mass deportation, 49 percent against.

• Aysha Bagchi, Bart Jansen, Lauren Villagran, “Donald Trump Has Promised a ‘Mass Deportation.’ It Would Cost Billions.“ (USA Today, October 22, 2024).

The Washington Examiner noted that Trump’s deportation plan, which the campaign has not described in detail, would face obstacles including its scale, ICE capacity, legal challenges, political backlash, and economic impacts.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Five Challenges to Trump Executing His Mass Deportation Plan“ (The Washington Examiner, October 22, 2024).

Among trends in the Mixed Migration Center’s latest quarterly report on Latin America highlights reduced migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, reduced Darién Gap migration, and a drop in asylum cases in Mexico. (Last week, Panama released data showing a September increase in Darién Gap migration, led by Venezuelan citizens, though migration remains below levels measured during the first half of 2024.)

• “Quarterly Mixed Migration Update Latin America and the Caribbean, Quarter 3, 2024“ (Mixed Migration Centre, October 22, 2024).

On the Right

• Adam Shaw, “Biden Admin Faces Scrutiny Over Response to ‘Significant Rise’ of Assaults on Border Patrol Agents“ (Fox News, October 22, 2024).
• Elizabeth Elkind, “‘It’s a Mess’: Vulnerable House Dem Shreds Biden on Border Crisis in ‘Closing Message’ of Campaign“ (Fox News, October 22, 2024).

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Developments

In a U.S.-assisted operation, Colombian police and judicial authorities arrested another 17 people, one of them Nicaraguan, for charging migrants $200 to $450 each to travel from Colombia’s Caribbean island department of San Andrés to Nicaragua by boat.

Four of the seventeen—including two local government officials from San Andrés—stand accused of charging migrants from Asia, particularly Vietnam, $2,000 to $2,500 each to fly from Colombia’s border with Ecuador to Nicaragua via San Andrés.

The San Andrés to Nicaragua route allows migrants to avoid the Darién Gap.

• “Funcionarios de Gobernacion de San Andres Traficarian Migrantes: Policia” (El Espectador (Colombia), October 21, 2024).
• “Nicaraguense Capturado en Colombia por Trafico de Migrantes Desde Medellin a Eeuu” (Nicaragua Investiga, October 21, 2024).

Border Report reported on an October 20 shootout between members of Mexico’s National Guard and members of a criminal group on a highway that follows Mexico’s side of the border between El Paso and Tornillo, Texas. The road has recently been upgraded, noted Border Report’s Julián Resendiz, but “some truckers have expressed misgivings about using the highway due to well-documented drug cartel activity in the area known as El Valle de Juarez (Valley of Juarez).”

• Julian Resendiz, “National Guard, Armed Civilians Clash on Border Highway” (Border Report, October 21, 2024).

A Breitbart report noted increased arrivals of asylum seekers turning themselves in to Border Patrol in mid-Texas’s Del Rio Sector. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) source told Breitbart‘s Randy Clark, a former Border Patrol agent, that “nearly 160” unaccompanied children from Central and South American nations crossed into Eagle Pass within the past week.

• Bob Price, “Reports: 2,500 Migrants Depart Southern Mexico in Caravan Bound for U.S. Border” (Breitbart, October 21, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

In the first article of a pre-election series, ProPublica published a detailed overview of how migration at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted during the past few years, noting changes in nationalities and demographics and effects on the immigration court system, receiving communities, the U.S. labor market, and electoral politics. The investigation found that the newly arrived migrants have been “concentrated in relatively few places around the country.”

• Jeff Ernsthausen, Mica Rosenberg, “What the Data Reveals About U.S. Immigration Ahead of the 2024 Election” (ProPublica, October 21, 2024).

In response to NBC News revelation that 30 percent of Border Patrol’s Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) cameras are broken, Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that border surveillance technology is “political theater” and “a wasteful endeavor that is ill-equipped to respond to an ill-defined problem.”

• Dave Maass, “U.S. Border Surveillance Towers Have Always Been Broken” (Electronic Frontier Foundation, October 21, 2024).

NPR’s Adrian Florido reported from Florida about how some members of the state’s Venezuelan-American community are agreeing with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s evidence-free demonization of recent Venezuelan migrants as “criminals” and voicing support for their deportation. Some of this attitude appears related to class differences between earlier migrants and newer arrivals, who tend to be poorer and often darker-skinned.

• Adrian Florido, “Trump Calls Venezuelan Migrants Criminals. Some Venezuelans Agree, Others Fight Back” (National Public Radio, October 21, 2024).

A column at Jacobin criticized NBC’s decision to delay screening Separated, the new Errol Morris documentary about the Trump administration’s family separation policy, until after the U.S. election.

• Eileen Jones, “Errol Morris’s Reminder of Trump’s Sadistic Border Policy” (Jacobin, October 21, 2024).

“As the Trump campaign’s rhetorical demonization of immigrants escalates, it is reasonable to wonder why Democrats and liberals around the world have decided to effectively abandon the issue to their adversaries,” reads a column at Newsweek from David Faris of Roosevelt University.

• David Faris, “Why Liberals Around the World Lost Support for Their Border Policies” (Roosevelt University, Newsweek, October 21, 2024).

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Developments

Two San Diego hospitals, Scripps Mercy Hospital and UC San Diego Medical Center, report 993 “severe falls” from the border wall so far this year (Scripps through August, UCSD through September). That is up 58 percent over falls recorded in all of 2023, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee hypothesized that Mexico’s placement of troops in an area east of the city with little or no fencing might be leading more migrants, including those seeking to turn themselves in to authorities, to attempt to scale the wall.

• Paul Sisson, “Hospitals Report 58 Percent Increase in Border Wall Trauma Falls” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, October 20, 2024).

A Mother Jones investigation of the U.S. government’s search-and-rescue system for preventing the deaths of migrants in distress found “a scattershot emergency response system with little accountability, in which responsibility for saving migrants’ lives is divided among Border Patrol agents whose primary duty is law enforcement, not search and rescue; overtaxed county search and rescue teams; and unpaid volunteers from humanitarian groups.”

• Sarah Tory, How a Compromised Search and Rescue System in the Borderlands Leaves Migrants in Peril (Mother Jones, Thursday, October 17, 2024).

Another in a series of “caravans,” combining migrants from many nationalities, departed Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas on Sunday. Some participants in the large group said that they felt a need to get to U.S. soil before a transfer of power in the United States, as Republican candidate Donald Trump, who is tied in polls, has pledged to eliminate the use of the CBP One smartphone app and other legal migration pathways.

Mexico’s migration agency (National Migration Institute, INM) sought to discourage the movement by offering bus rides from Tapachula to Chiapas’s capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, about 150 miles away. “They told us that they are going to give us a 10-day permit there so that we can wait for a CBP One appointment and they will take us to Tuxtla Gutiérrez,” a Honduran man told EFE.

• “A Group of 2,000 Migrants in Southern Mexico Depart for the Us Weeks Before Election” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 20, 2024).
• “Miles de Migrantes Venezolanos Arman una Caravana Hacia ee.uu.” (EFE, October 20, 2024).

El Paso, Texas municipal officials told Border Report that they are monitoring the caravans moving through Mexico’s far south, although “we don’t know what part of the border they’re going.”

• Julian Resendiz, “El Paso Prepares for Possible Arrival of Migrant Caravans” (Border Report, October 18, 2024).

The Mexican government’s secretaries of interior, foreign affairs, army, and navy met on October 18 “to review the current situation of irregular migration crossing the country, and the repatriation of Mexicans,” Milenio reported.

• Pedro Dominguez, “Reunion Entre Fuerzas Armadas, Sre y Segob” (Milenio (Mexico), October 18, 2024).

Mexican civil society organizations making up the “Central Border Monitoring Group” denounced that Mexico City authorities have been arranging to bus migrants to states further north, like Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí, “without clear information or the delivery of regular transit documents.”

• Jared Laureles, Jessica Xantomila, “Retiran a Migrantes de Cdmx y los Abandonan en Otras Urbes, Acusan” (La Jornada (Mexico), October 20, 2024).

NPR reported on a ballot measure in Arizona, Proposition 314, that—like the highly controversial SB4 in Texas—would make it a violation of state law to cross the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization. Advocates worry that, if the measure passes, local police may profile people they suspect of having crossed illegally, demanding that they “show their papers” anywhere in the state.

• Ximena Bustillo, “Arizona Voters Will Soon Decide if Illegal Border Crossings Should Be a State Crime” (National Public Radio, October 18, 2024).

Home building firms told NBC News that presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plans for a “mass deportation” campaign would decimate their labor force and cripple their industry. “You’d lose so many people that you couldn’t put a crew together to frame a house,” said the CEO of a Texas-based subcontracting firm.

• Jing Feng, Nicole Acevedo, “Trump Vows to Deport Millions. Builders Say It Would Drain Their Crews and Drive Up Home Costs.” (NBC News, October 19, 2024).

Municipal police in Tijuana are offering to have agents inspect northbound vehicles in order to shorten border crossing times at the busy San Ysidro port of entry, Border Report reported.

• Salvador Rivera, “Tijuana Police Offer to Inspect Vehicles at Border to Expedite Crossing Times” (Border Report, October 18, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A New York Times analysis contended that Donald Trump is “doubling down” on the border and immigration as the issue that can win the election for him, despite poll data showing voters more concerned about economic issues.

• Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Ruth Igielnik, “Trump Thinks the Border Got Him Elected in 2016. He’s Convinced It Will Do So Again.” (The New York Times, October 19, 2024).

Amid Democrats’ rightward pivot on border and immigration issues during the 2024 election cycle, Vox reporter Nicole Narea wrote that if elected, Kamala Harris would probably adopt a “two-pronged” approach, keeping current curbs on asylum and boosting border security while also maintaining alternative legal pathways for migrants.

• Nicole Narea, “How Tough Would a President Kamala Harris Be on Immigrants?” (Vox, October 18, 2024).

“The Mexican government reported 200,289 Venezuelans ‘in an irregular migratory situation’ in the first half of 2024,” EFE reported. That is 215 percent more than during the first half of 2023. According to this estimate, Venezuela is the number-one nationality of undocumented migrants in Mexico, making up over a quarter of the total.

• “Migrantes de Nicaragua, Cuba y Venezuela Quedan en el Limbo en Mexico por Medidas de Ee. Uu.” (EFE, Confidencial (Nicaragua), October 20, 2024).

“Half of the fentanyl coming into the U.S. is seized at the Mariposa Port of Entry” in Nogales, Arizona, CBP’s top official, Troy Miller, told the Arizona Republic. The port, west of downtown with much cargo traffic, is now able to scan about 50 percent of cargo, Miller added.

• Raphael Romero Ruiz, “Cbp Reports Declining Border Crossings and Record Fentanyl Busts in 2024” (The Arizona Republic, October 19, 2024).

Increasing organized crime violence in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco may be related to the Mexican government’s mass busing of migrants to the state’s capital, Villahermosa, mainly from the U.S. border region, according to an InSight Crime analysis. An already existing conflict between organized crime factions in the state is being exacerbated by “large sums” that can be gained “from extorting vulnerable migrants” being bused there at a rate of about 10,000 people per month.

• Peter Appleby, “Is Mexico Fueling a Gang War by Sending Migrants to Tabasco?” (InsightCrime, October 18, 2024).

On the Right

• Josh Christenson, “Biden Refused to Reinstate Trump-Era Border Policies Because ‘Mexico Doesn’t Want That,’ Speaker Mike Johnson Says” (The New York Post, October 18, 2024).
• Selene Rodriguez, “Fixing the Border Starts With Calling Mexican Cartels Terrorists” (Texas Public Policy Foundation, The Federalist, October 18, 2024).

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Developments

On a visit to San Diego, the senior official performing the duties of Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) commissioner, Troy Miller, highlighted “Operation Apollo,” which the local NBC affiliate described as “a relatively new strategy to decrease the amount of apprehensions made by agents through increased enforcement, harsher penalties for offenders and heightened collaboration with relevant agencies.”

Soon, perhaps today, CBP will publish information about migration and drug seizures through September 30, the final day of the U.S. federal government’s 2024 fiscal year.

• Dana Williams, “During San Diego Visit, Acting Border Patrol Boss Says Enforcement Has Been Enhanced” (NBC San Diego, October 17, 2024).

Two Venezuelan men were shot, one fatally, in an incident at a market near downtown Ciudad Juárez on October 16.

• Julian Resendiz, “Two Venezuelan Men Shot in Head in Juarez” (Border Report, October 17, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A team of Washington Post reporters published a dispatch from south Texas about the impacts of border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley region. The border river’s unstable course requires segments of barrier to be built as much as two miles inland, “leaving thousands of acres in the liminal space between the border and the barrier.” That leaves plenty of U.S. soil upon which people have the right to request asylum.

• Frank Hulley-Jones, Kirsten Luce, Laris Karklis, Nick Miroff, “Between the Border and the Wall” (The Washington Post, October 18, 2024).

An explainer from Ariel Ruiz Soto of the Migration Policy Institute pointed out that, according to “a growing volume of research,” immigrants not only commit fewer crimes in the United States, but they may even “lower criminal activity, especially violent crime, in places with inclusive policies and social environments where immigrant populations are well established.”

• Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, “Explainer: Immigrants and Crime in the United States” (Migration Policy Institute, October 17, 2024).

“I have organized around immigration for over two decades, during which Democrats repeatedly succumbed to their opponents’ playbook and positioned the issue as a national security and public safety issue,” Silky Shah of Detention Watch wrote at Inquest. “Yet even in this climate, there is no escaping how surreal this moment is” amid a nationwide rightward shift. Shah concludes, “In many ways, the current conditions require us to return to the basics of organizing and movement building.”

• Silky Shah, “Preparing for the Worst” (Detention Watch, Inquest, October 17, 2024).

At Redacción Regional, Bryan Avelar reported from Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, where tens of thousands of migrants, most seeking to make it to the United States, are stranded by Mexico’s efforts to block them and long waits for CBP One appointments. The city “is a kind of paradise for the trafficking of migrant women,” Avelar wrote.

• Bryan Avelar, “Diarios Desde Babel: La Trampa-Chula” (Redacción Regional (Central America), October 17, 2024).

San Antonio’s ABC affiliate featured the work of Operation Identification, a nonprofit at Texas State University that is helping to identify the remains of migrants found in the Texas borderlands and provide closure to their loved ones.

• Zaria Oates, “Nonprofit at Texas State University Works to Identify Unknown Remains Along Texas-Mexico Border” (KSAT (San Antonio), October 17, 2024).

Fernando Castro, a former Guatemalan consular official, wrote a column in Guatemala’s Prensa Libre noting recent government efforts to link up with U.S. medical examiners—especially in Pima County, Arizona—to help relatives of missing migrants contribute DNA samples that could match them to migrant remains recovered near the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Fernando Castro, “Se Incrementan Desaparecimientos y Muertes de Migrantes en Frontera Sur de Ee. Uu.” (La Hora (Guatemala), October 17, 2024).

A report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, supported by the International Institute of New England, highlighted the severe humanitarian consequences of recent U.S. policies restricting the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Asylum seekers, the report finds, face worsened risks of kidnapping, extortion, and abuse while waiting in Mexico; Black and LGBTQIA+ migrants face particular discrimination and targeting.

• “Mariposas de la Frontera” (International Institute of New England (IINE), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), October 17, 2024).
• Sarah Betancourt, “Report Says Migration Down at the Border, at the Cost of Humanitarian Law” (Boston Public Radio, October 17, 2024).

On the Right

• Byron York, “Finally Faced With Hard Questions on Border, Harris Has No Answers” (The Washington Examiner, October 17, 2024).

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Developments

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, spent nearly half of a contentious interview with FOX News host Bret Baier discussing the border and migration.

The New York Times noted that Baier, the FOX host, “repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her.” When able to talk, Harris often returned to her central border talking point: Donald Trump’s opposition to a bill, which failed in the Senate in February following negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators, that would have hired more border officers and agents, increased migrant detention, and tightened asylum availability.

Asked, “Do you regret the decision to terminate Remain in Mexico at the beginning of your administration?” Harris did not address the controversial program but pointed out that, in its early days, the administration backed a comprehensive immigration reform bill (which failed to move through Congress in 2021).

• Bret Baier, “Full Interview: Vice President Kamala Harris Sits Down With Bret Baier in ‘Special Report’ Exclusive“ (Fox News, October 16, 2024).
• Katie Rogers, Nicholas Nehamas, “6 Takeaways From Harris’s Contentious Interview on Fox News“ (The New York Times, October 16, 2024).

At Vox, Christian Paz viewed Harris’s responses to Baier as ceding political ground to immigration hardliners: “The Vice President had a chance to defend immigrants on Fox News. She passed.”

• Christian Paz, “Kamala Harris and the Problem With Ceding the Argument“ (Vox, October 16, 2024).

In a debate between Pennsylvania Senate candidates, incumbent Democrat Bob Casey attacked his Republican challenger, Dave McCormick, for joining Donald Trump in opposing the February compromise Senate bill. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t support that,” Casey said. “It doesn’t make any sense when he knows that we could advance the ball based upon the expertise of the Border Patrol.”

• Christen Smith, “Casey, Mccormick Challenge Border Security Policies“ (The Center Square, October 16, 2024).

The DeConcini border port of entry in Nogales, Arizona was closed for a few hours yesterday afternoon after a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer shot and wounded a man who attempted to drive through a vehicle lane at the crossing.

• Paul Ingram, “Border Officer Shoots, Wounds Man Attempting to Drive Through Deconcini Crossing in Nogales“ (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), October 16, 2024).

Texas police reported apprehending a group of 204 migrants, including 47 unaccompanied children, near the border city of Eagle Pass. This is part of Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector, which has experienced an increase in arrivals of large groups of migrants seeking to turn themselves in to authorities over the past few weeks.

• Billal Rahman, “200 Illegal Immigrants Apprehended in Texas“ (Newsweek, October 17, 2024).

New U.S. asylum restrictions and Mexico’s policy of transporting migrants to the country’s south are increasing pressure in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, where large groups have formed this month into so-called “caravans.” The groups walking through Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcala states, numbering as many as 1,000 each, intend to reach Mexico City, either to petition Mexican authorities for faster asylum processes or other documentation, or to disperse and seek to reach the U.S. border from there.

• Julian Resendiz, “4,000 Migrants Headed for Us, Trying to Beat Trump to the Punch“ (Border Report, October 16, 2024).
• Billal Rahman, “New Migrant Caravan Approaching Us-Mexico Border“ (Newsweek, October 17, 2024).

Mexican soldiers who fired on a vehicle carrying migrants in Chiapas on October 1, killing six of them, “will be tried under military laws, a key issue for human rights activists who say the process lacks transparency,” Reuters reported. A Mexican military press release stated that two soldiers began shooting after hearing “detonations.” Reporter Lizbeth Díaz spoke to three residents of the area where the incident occurred, who “said they heard no explosions.”

• Lizbeth Diaz, “Mexico Military’s Role in Migrant Massacre Comes Under Sharp Scrutiny“ (Reuters, Reuters, October 16, 2024).

Ecuador’s El Universo told the story of Melissa Barzola, a Guayaquil resident who migrated to Mexico via the Darién Gap and secured a CBP One appointment in Ciudad Juárez, only to be kidnapped from the bus in which she was traveling in mid-September, likely in Durango or Chihuahua, Mexico. The kidnappers demanded $5,000 from her family in Ecuador; they mortgaged their house to pay the ransom, but Barzola has not been released.

• “‘Carteles Nos Pedian $ 5.000 de Rescate o No la Soltaban, Pusimos en Hipoteca la Casita de Mi Madre para Pagar’, Denuncia Familia de Guayaquilena Secuestrada en Mexico“ (El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), October 16, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

At Foreign Affairs, Andrea Flores of FWD.us, a former Biden administration official, pointed out the failure of repeated crackdowns to control migration or bring security to the border. While fixing the U.S. asylum system would help greatly, she argued, it is no substitute for fundamentally updating U.S. immigration laws that mostly date back to 1990. “The overwhelmed asylum system is not the cause of the border crisis but rather a consequence of the United States’ failure to develop a coherent response to global shifts in irregular migration,” Flores wrote.

• Andrea Flores, “Why Washington Has Failed to Solve the Border Crisis“ (fwd.us, Foreign Affairs, October 17, 2024).

The American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick published an overview of “the current state of the border” at the organization’s Immigration Impact blog. It notes that crackdowns in Mexico and in U.S. asylum access have brought Border Patrol apprehensions to relatively low levels, a “fragile equilibrium” threatened by “signs that the slow-down in migration is ending” in the Darién Gap and through Central America.

• Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “The Current State of the Border: Crossings Remain Low While Pressure Builds in Southern Mexico“ (American Immigration Council, October 16, 2024).

The Dallas Morning News published a status report about the ongoing campaign of Texas’s state attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), against nonprofits assisting migrants in the state. Paxton accuses groups like El Paso’s respected Annunciation House shelter network of encouraging unauthorized migration by providing shelter and aid.

• Aaron Torres, “Intent on Slowing Illegal Immigration, Texas Is Fighting Charities That Help Migrants“ (The Dallas Morning News, October 16, 2024).

On a drive along Arizona’s border, Los Angeles Times reporter Jeffrey Fleishman talked to migrants, volunteers, ranchers, and other community members about the region’s humanitarian, political, and security complexities. Fleischmann heard calls for greater border security from some, and for immigration reform from others, in a region where the number of migrants dying in the desert remains very high.

• Jeffrey Fleishman, “Heat, Thirst and Rosaries: A Drive Along Arizona’s Border With Mexico“ (The Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2024).

The independent Cuba-focused media outlet El Toque pointed out that CBP One appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border now rival the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program as the best option available for people fleeing the island.

• Ernesto Eimil, “¿Cbp One Facilita Mas la Entrada de Migrantes Cubanos Que el Parole Humanitario?“ (El Toque (Cuba), October 16, 2024).

FOX News reported on alleged U.S. activities of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan criminal organization that some U.S. politicians are using to portray all Venezuelan migrants as threatening due to its small presence among those fleeing the economically depressed South American dictatorship.

• Adam Shaw, Bonny Chu, Chris Pandolfo, “Who Is Tren de Aragua? Vicious Venezuelan Gang ‘Following in the Path of Ms-13’ in America“ (Fox News, October 16, 2024).

On the Right

• Byron York, “What Bill Clinton’s Gaffe Says About Harris and the Border“ (The Washington Examiner, October 16, 2024).

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Developments

Police in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, reported seizing 14 kilograms of fentanyl pills in the crime-plagued neighborhood of Anapra, along the border with New Mexico, west of El Paso. This comes shortly after a local media report about a raid on a fentanyl lab in the same neighborhood.

This is notable because since 2019, 96 percent of CBP’s border-zone fentanyl seizures (71,883 of 74,953 pounds) have occurred in California and Arizona—far from the Ciudad Juárez area, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

• Julian Resendiz, “Police Seize 130,000 Fentanyl Pills Near Border Wall” (Border Report, October 15, 2024).

Aaron Heitke, who served as chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector and is now retired, alleged in a recent congressional hearing that Biden administration officials had “pushed him” to hide groups of asylum-seeking migrants “out of sight” of cameras as they waited between layers of the border wall to turn themselves in.

A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official speaking on background to Voice of San Diego denied Heitke’s allegations. Lilian Serrano of the Southern Border Communities Coalition said that Heitke’s claim confirmed humanitarian groups’ suspicions that Border Patrol “hides migrants from our view…so that we don’t see violations” of policies for humane treatment of people waiting to turn themselves in.

• Kate Morrissey, “Border Report: San Diego’s Ex-Border Patrol Chief Says He Was Pressured to Hide Migrants” (Voice of San Diego, October 15, 2024).

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed 50 percent more cases against people for migrant smuggling in Arizona during July-September than it did during January-March, at a time of sharply reduced migrant apprehensions overall, reported Arizona Public Media.

• Danyelle Khmara, “Human Smuggling Charges in Arizona Increase While Border Apprehensions Drop” (Arizona Public Media, October 15, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Colombian government’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office reported from the beginning of the route through the Darién Gap that, under organized crime dictates, migrants must pay US$350 each for boat fare, lodging, and “guides” on the Colombian side of the trail.

• “Varados en Playas del Golfo de Uraba: La Cruda Realidad de las Personas Migrantes” (Defensoria del Pueblo (Government of Colombia), October 15, 2024).

EFE reported on the reduction in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border due to Mexico’s crackdown on in-transit migration and the Biden administration’s restrictions on asylum access. “Now, usually very few people arrive. For the most part, they are unaware that you use a (mobile) app to make an appointment and get an interview to request asylum,” said Pedro Ríos of the American Friends Service Committee. Ríos pointed out, however, that the wait time for appointments at ports of entry using the CBP One app can be eight or nine months.

• Manuel Ocano, ““Los Rios de Gente” Desaparecieron en la Frontera de ee.uu. Con Mexico” (EFE, Yahoo!, October 15, 2024).

Palabra explored the struggles of migrants seeking to integrate into life and the economy in Chicago, focusing on the story of a family who fled Venezuela, could not settle firmly in Colombia, and then traveled through the Darién Gap to the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso.

• Alma Campos, “In Chicago, Immigrants Who Fled Violence and War Struggle With Their Mental Health” (Palabra, October 16, 2024).

Snopes examined the role that Kamala Harris has played in migration and border policy as Vice President. The site noted that claims Harris served as a “border czar” are “misleading,” as they “often conflate her role in addressing the root causes of migration with direct border security responsibilities.”

• Nikki Dobrin, “Was Vp Harris Ever Appointed Us ‘Border Czar’? It’s Complicated” (Snopes, October 15, 2024).

“Latinx artists and storytellers are creating their own narratives about the border as a vibrant and rich landscape,” reads a profile of borderland artists Favianna Rodríguez, Jenea Sánchez, Gabriela Muñoz, and Pita Juárez in The 19th.

• Jessica Kutz, “These Latinx Creators Are Challenging Border Narratives Through Art and Storytelling” (The 19th, October 15, 2024).

On the Right

• Kevin Roberts, “It Is Time to Stop Allocating Fema Funding to Illegal Immigrants” (Heritage Foundation, The American Conservative, October 16, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Border Patrol Agents Threaten to Leave in Droves if Kamala Harris Wins: ‘Not Doing This S–T Again’” (The New York Post, October 15, 2024).
• Justin Gest, “Liberals’ Pivot on Border Control Is Now Complete” (George Mason University, Newsweek, October 15, 2024).

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Developments

The Associated Press reported on the alarming recent increase in migrant deaths along the border in New Mexico, especially in areas not far from the city of El Paso, Texas. Among the causes, Dylan Corbett of the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute cited “systematic” organized crime activity, Texas’s state border crackdown, and the Biden administration’s recent curbs on asylum access.

• Anita Snow, Christopher L. Keller, Morgan Lee, “Migrant Deaths in New Mexico Have Increased Tenfold” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 15, 2024).

NBC News revealed that 30 percent of the Border Patrol’s Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) cameras aren’t working. According to a leaked internal Border Patrol memo, this means “roughly 150 of 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers” along the U.S.-Mexico border are inoperable due to “several technical problems.“ The RVSS is not Border Patrol’s only system of cameras along the border but is still its “primary” program.

• Julia Ainsley, “30% of the Cameras in Border Patrol’s Main Surveillance System Are Broken, Memo Says” (NBC News, October 14, 2024).

In Guatemala, a court is considering the case of 23 National Police agents accused of collaborating with “La RS,” an illegal migrant smuggling organization. The police allegedly helped move 10,000 migrants in exchange for bribes, primarily transporting them from Guatemala’s border with El Salvador to its border with Mexico.

• Sergio Osegueda, “Juez Decreta Bajo Reserva Caso Que Vincula a Agentes de Pnc Con Coyotes” (La Hora (Guatemala), October 14, 2024).

The Mexican government’s independent Federal Institute of Federal Public Defense (IFDP) reported that it has not been able to obtain information about the migrants who were killed and wounded in Chiapas on October 1, when soldiers opened fire on the vehicle in which they were traveling. According to Proceso, the IFDP “denounced that the people transferred to the hospital were sent to the ‘Siglo XXI’ migrant detention center, ‘which revictimizes and violates the principle of non-repetition of acts of violence and discrimination faced by people in mobility.’”

• “Defensoria Publica Denuncia Falta de Informacion Sobre Migrantes Fallecidos en Operativo de Sedena” (Proceso (Mexico), October 14, 2024).

Enrique Valenzuela, the longtime head of the State Population Council (COESPO) in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, told a conference that the border city’s migrant shelters are currently at least 40 percent full. Migration levels remain significant in the area, Valenzuela said. However, the Biden administration’s asylum curbs have brought an end, for now, to large groups of people attempting to turn themselves in to Border Patrol.

• Julian Resendiz, “Mexico Still Sees Steady Flow of Migrants to Us Border” (Border Report, October 14, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

“By mid-2024, more than 20.3 million forcibly displaced and stateless people were hosted in the Americas,” according to a new UNHCR factsheet.

• “Americas: Factsheet” (UN Refugee Agency, October 14, 2024).

At Texas Monthly, Jack Herrera found that for all the Texas state government’s political posturing about undocumented migration at the border, the state’s economy is heavily dependent on undocumented migrant labor. The investigation highlighted the state’s construction industry, where migrants fill acute labor shortages.

“Today, Texas is home to some 1.6 million undocumented immigrants, according to a Pew Research Center study of 2022 census data,” Herrera noted. That means about 1 in 20 people in Texas were undocumented that year, compared to about 1 in 30 nationwide.

• Jack Herrera, “Why Texas Secretly Loves Illegal Immigration” (Texas Monthly, October 14, 2024).

The New York Times pointed out the lack of detail with which Republican candidate Donald Trump makes his hardline border security proposals, such as an October 13 pledge to hire 10,000 more Border Patrol agents and a promise to employ the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 to enable a mass deportation campaign.

• Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Trump’s Border Plans Are Light on Details but Strong on Fury” (The New York Times, October 15, 2024).

At his Substack newsletter, Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck offered context about the Alien Enemy Act, concluding that courts are so likely to restrict its use that “this is almost certainly empty (if nevertheless disturbing) posturing by former President Trump.”

• Steve Vladeck, “103. Alien Enemies in the Supreme Court” (One First, October 14, 2024).

The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive into Kamala Harris’s role in border and migration policy during her vice presidency.

• Lauren Weber, Michelle Hackman, Santiago Perez, Tarini Parti, “How Kamala Harris Tackled Her Border Assignment” (The Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2024).

The Free Press, a conservative publication, reported that sex trafficking groups are taking advantage of weaknesses in the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s placements of unaccompanied migrant children with relatives or sponsors.

• Madeleine Rowley, “Inside America’s Fastest-Growing Criminal Enterprise: Sex Trafficking” (The Free Press, October 14, 2024).

On the Right

• Nikolas Lanum, “‘Open Border’: Blue City Voters Grapple With Immigration Crisis, Reveal Whether Trump or Harris Can Solve It” (Fox News, October 15, 2024).
• Ben Butcher, Benedict Smith, “Four Migrants Apprehended at Mexico Border for Every Minute Kamala Harris Has Been Vice-President” (The Telegraph (UK), October 14, 2024).
• David Zimmermann, “Border Patrol Union Endorses Trump; President Predicts ‘Border Czar Harris’ Will Send the Country ‘to Hell’” (National Review, October 14, 2024).
• “Editorial: Bill Clinton Got It Right: Harris, Biden’s Broken Border Led to Laken Riley’s Murder” (The New York Post, October 14, 2024).

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Developments

Republican candidate Donald Trump visited Aurora, Colorado on October 11, where he called for a campaign of mass deportations of migrants that, if elected, he would call “Operation Aurora.” The deportation blitz would rely on the Alien Enemies Act, part of the rarely used Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

The Denver suburb has received much attention in conservative media and Republican politicians’ statements because of the alleged presence of members of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization, in an apartment block.

The city’s mayor and other Republican officials have said that the presence of Tren de Aragua is minimal, and mayor Mike Coffman (R, a former congressman) criticized Trump for exaggerating it. “The mayor said they were exaggerated. That means there’s gotta be some element of truth here,” Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), said on ABC’s This Week.

• Hadriana Lowenkron, “Trump Brands Deportation Push ‘Operation Aurora’ at Rally” (Bloomberg, Yahoo, October 11, 2024).
• Marisa Schultz, Samantha-Jo Roth, “Trump Tells Arizona He’ll ‘Rescue’ America From Harris’s Border ‘Reign of Terror’” (The Washington Examiner, October 13, 2024).
• “Ben Siegel @Bensiegel on Twitter” (Twitter, October 11, 2024).
• Lauren Irwin, “Vance, Abc Host Spar Over Claims of Venezuelan Gang in Colorado” (The Hill, October 13, 2024).
• Kristina Cooke, Nathan Frandino, Ted Hesson, “Trump Expected to Play Up Fears of Venezuelan Gang in Aurora, Colorado” (Reuters, Reuters, October 11, 2024).
• Lindsay Kornick, “Democratic Lawmaker Dismisses Venezuelan Migrant Gang Problem: ‘It’s the Maga Gang’” (Fox News, October 13, 2024).
• Avery Meurer, “Tren de Aragua: What to Know About the Venezuelan Gang Making Headlines in San Antonio and Texas” (KSAT (San Antonio), October 11, 2024).

Civilian U.S. agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), lack the capacity to carry out Trump’s proposed mass deportation plan on their own. The candidate would use rarely invoked emergency authorities to have members of the U.S. military carry out deportation and border security duties.

It is very unusual to have soldiers carrying out non-defense duties on U.S. soil that put them in regular contact with civilians. But as an Associated Press analysis pointed out, “He [Trump] has pledged to recall thousands of American troops from overseas and station them at the U.S. border with Mexico. He has explored using troops for domestic policy priorities such as deportations and confronting civil unrest. He has talked of weeding out military officers who are ideologically opposed to him.”

• Stephen Groves, “Trump Tested the Limits on Using the Military at Home. If Elected Again, He Plans to Go Further” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 13, 2024).

Trump’s proposed use of the Alien Enemies Act is highly controversial. Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck pointed out that “Courts have historically taken a remarkably narrow view of the statute’s scope” and would face similar challenges even in today’s more conservative federal courts.

• “Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck on Twitter” (Twitter, October 13, 2024).

At an October 13 rally in Arizona, Trump brought up leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing most Border Patrol agents. The union’s new president, Paul Pérez, endorsed Trump, telling the crowd, “If we allow Border Czar [Kamala] Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country, is going to go to hell.”

• Marisa Schultz, Samantha-Jo Roth, “Trump Tells Arizona He’ll ‘Rescue’ America From Harris’s Border ‘Reign of Terror’” (The Washington Examiner, October 13, 2024).
• “Anna Giaritelli @anna_giaritelli on Twitter” (Twitter, October 13, 2024).

The candidate proposed a 10 percent pay raise for Border Patrol agents and a $10,000 signing bonus for recruits, in order to add 10,000 new agents to a force that currently has just under 20,000.

Border Patrol already had enough funds appropriated in 2024 to maintain a workforce of 22,000, but has barely been able to hire more agents than it loses to retirements and other attrition. CBP continues to struggle to find recruits who can pass background checks, including a polygraph exam with a high failure rate. Already, the Washington Post pointed out, “new Border Patrol agents could be eligible for as much as $30,000 in incentives.”

Several news reports noted that in February, Trump urged Republican legislators to kill a compromise Senate bill that, among other provisions, would have hired about 1,500 new Border Patrol agents and CBP officers.

• Patrick Svitek, “In Arizona, Trump Pitches Ideas to Attract More Border Patrol Agents” (The Washington Post, October 13, 2024).
• Meg Kinnard, Nicholas Riccardi, “Trump Calls for Adding 10,000 Border Patrol Agents After Derailing a Bipartisan Border Bill” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 13, 2024).
• Ted Hesson, Tim Reid, “Trump Pledges 10,000 Extra Border Agents in Fight With Harris Over Immigration” (Reuters, Reuters, October 13, 2024).

The New York Times noted that the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, has been playing up her past performance as a prosecutor and attorney-general in a border state, California, which included many prosecutions of transnational organized crime groups. Her efforts to collaborate with other states and other nations “led to the arrests of larger players in the drug trade and seizures of greater quantities of drugs and other illicit goods,” the Times reported. “Ms. Harris is leaning into that experience as she runs on the most conservative border and immigration platform of any Democrat in decades.”

• Jazmine Ulloa, Nicholas Nehamas, “On the Trail, Harris Turns to Her Experience Fighting Cross-Border Crime” (The New York Times, October 13, 2024).
• Isabela Dias, “Harris’ Missed Chance to Explain Her Differences on Immigration” (Mother Jones, October 11, 2024).

Panama’s migration authority released data about September migration through the treacherous Darién Gap region. It showed a 51 percent increase in the number of people transiting the Darién Gap last month compared to August, which was one of the lightest months in the past two years.

Of 25,111 migrants registered at the route’s end in September, 79 percent were citizens of Venezuela. Migration from Venezuela leaped 69 percent (19,800, up from 11,733 in August). This is a likely consequence of the Nicolás Maduro regime’s refusal to recognize a probable landslide defeat in July 28 elections, which it followed with a wave of political repression.

Refugees International published an in-depth report about the current experience of migrants transiting the Panama segment of the Darién Gap route, the rest of Panama, and Costa Rica. Researchers Caitlyn Yates and Rachel Schmidtke warned that Panama’s and Costa Rica’s restrictive policies are exacerbating humanitarian crises without curbing migration, and they expect high levels of migration to persist.

The report finds that both countries’ busing system, which intends to reduce smuggling, leaves vulnerable migrants stranded due to high fees and inadequate financial support. Humanitarian needs are particularly acute in Costa Rica’s border regions.

• Caitlyn Yates, Rachel Schmidtke, “After the Darien: Aid and Pathways for Migrants in Panama and Costa Rica” (Refugees International, October 11, 2024).

A report from the Venezuela Observatory at Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario highlighted some of the dangers that migrants face during the Darién journey in Colombia and Panama, especially predation by organized crime.

• “La Responsabilidad Regional en la Migracion por el Darien” (Observatorio de Venezuela de la Universidad del Rosario (Colombia), Bitacora Migratoria, October 11, 2024).

Darién Gap migrants, along with Central Americans and people who take aerial routes into countries like Nicaragua, continue to arrive in large numbers at Mexico’s southern border. Spain’s El País reported from Mexico’s southern border zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas, where people trying to use the CBP One app to obtain appointments at the U.S. border are subject to “heightened violence” while they struggle to earn money to survive. Many arrive already traumatized by the journey through the Darién and Central America.

• Almudena Barragan, “Thousands of Migrants Arrive in Chiapas, Seeking Asylum in the United States From Mexico’s Southern Border” (El Pais (Spain), October 12, 2024).

The number of in-transit migrants passing from Nicaragua into Honduras so far this year stood at 318,771 in 2024 as of October 7, about 12 percent less than at the same point in 2023, reported the independent Nicaraguan media outlet Confidencial, citing Honduran government data. Venezuelan citizens make up 49.6 percent of this year’s registered migrants.

• “Mas de 318 000 Migrantes Irregulares Han Cruzado a Honduras por Frontera Con Nicaragua” (Confidencial (Nicaragua), October 12, 2024).

About 1,000 migrants formed a “caravan” in Tapachula. Citing an inability to get CBP One appointments, participants said their destination is Mexico City. This is the second large group of migrants in Tapachula this month. According to Milenio, among the nationalities of those participating are “Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Central America, Haiti, Argentina, Panama, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, Nepal, and others.”

These “caravans” no longer reach the U.S.-Mexico border as they may have in 2018-2019; migrants tend to organize them now to protest delays in their migratory documentation efforts, or to achieve “safety in numbers” while traveling through segments of southern Mexico.

• Jhonatan Gonzalez, “Migrantes Emprenden una Segunda Caravana Desde Tapachula, Chiapas” (Milenio (Mexico), October 14, 2024).
• Jhonatan Gonzalez, “Caravana de Migrantes ‘Dios Nos Guia’ Partira de Tapachula Hacia Cdmx” (Milenio (Mexico), October 13, 2024).

The Mexican daily Milenio, citing information from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reported that the Venezuelan-origin Tren de Aragua criminal group “has joined Mexican gangs that operate a network of safe houses in US territory used for human smuggling, particularly in the El Paso region of Texas.” CBP public affairs official Landon Hutchens said, “Most of our criminal smuggling activity is from Mexican cartels, in our region (El Paso) we have three main cartels: La Empresa, La Linea and the Sinaloa Cartel. El Tren de Aragua (from Venezuela) is a new group.”

• Cesar Martinez, “‘Tren de Aragua’ se Expande en Mexico y Llega a la Frontera Con Eu” (Milenio (Mexico), October 14, 2024).

The Ciudad Juárez daily Norte reported, citing Chihuahua state authorities, that fentanyl labs have begun appearing in the border state, including one in the Ciudad Juárez neighborhood of Anapra across from El Paso’s western suburbs in New Mexico. Nearly all fentanyl has been entering Arizona and California, not Texas and New Mexico.

• Teofilo Alvarado, “Alarma por “Cocinas” de Fentanilo en Ciudad Juarez y Chihuahua” (Norte (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), October 11, 2024).

A federal judge has at least temporarily halted the legal offensive that Texas’s state attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), has been carrying out against organizations that assist migrants. In an unrelated case, magistrate Judge Mark Lane of the Western District of Texas granted an injunction stopping Paxton from using a “request to examine” statute in Texas law, determining that it is unconstitutional. The statute empowers Texas prosecutors to require companies and organizations (like legal aid groups or shelters) to “immediately permit” the attorney general to inspect their records.

• Ryan Autullo, “Texas’ 100-Plus Year Investigatory Tool Ruled Unconstitutional” (Bloomberg Law, October 11, 2024).
• Alejandro Serrano, Kayla Guo, Vianna Davila, “Judge Reportedly Strikes Down Texas Law That Ken Paxton Frequently Uses to Investigate Companies and Nonprofits” (Propublica, Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune, October 11, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

At USA Today, Lauren Villagrán examined Mexico’s crackdown on in-transit migration, which began at the beginning of the year. “Mexico is holding the line, analysts say, thanks to a carefully negotiated—but unwritten—agreement” with the U.S. government.

• Lauren Villagran, “As Us Election Nears, Mexico Keeps Up Border Enforcement, Blocks Migrants.” (USA Today, October 13, 2024).

The Huffington Post published a thorough review of human rights abuse allegations associated with Texas’s “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown. It focuses on Texas forces’ excessive use of force against non-threatening asylum seekers, many of them families, at the borderline. The alleged perpetrators are often National Guard military personnel.

Jeremy Slack, the sociology and anthropology department chair at the University of Texas at El Paso, noted that Texas state forces’ alleged abuses have increased sharply at a time when reports of abuse by Border Patrol agents have been dropping. “Border Patrol is a known quantity, and people have been working on the issue of Border Patrol accountability for decades… When you start a new agency doing this, especially in that shoot-from-the-hip, haphazard manner, with no clear mandate about what they’re actually trying to do, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

• Matt Shuham, “Observers Have a Warning About What’s Going on at the Texas-Mexico Border” (The Huffington Post, October 11, 2024).

The Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli interviewed Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), the lead Senate Republican negotiator of the compromise border bill that failed in February, following the Senator’s recent visit to the Arizona border. Lankford called for an end to the use of the CBP One app to admit migrants at ports of entry; for increased use of expedited removal proceedings without asking migrants if they fear return; for use of a “non-detained docket” to hand down rapid asylum decisions as soon as possible for recent arrivals; and for building up infrastructure and staffing at CBP’s border ports of entry.

• Anna Giaritelli, “James Lankford Has Four Immigration to-Dos for Trump After Visiting Border” (The Washington Examiner, October 12, 2024).

On the Right

• Rich Lowry, “Biden-Harris Cbp One App Is a Travesty — a False ‘Solution’ to the Border Crisis” (The New York Post, October 11, 2024).

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Developments

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, discussed immigration at a “town hall” event in Arizona hosted by Univisión. A woman asked Harris about how immigration policy forces undocumented people to live in the shadows, citing her mother who died recently without ever gaining documented status in the United States. While empathetic, the Vice President’s response “also underscored how much her hard-line immigration message has focused on enforcement rather than reform,” the New York Times observed.

• Jack Healy, Jazmine Ulloa, Nicholas Nehamas, “Harris Walks Fine Line on Immigration at Univision Town Hall” (The New York Times, October 10, 2024).

The Associated Press revealed that the number of migrants passing through the Darién Gap, a treacherous jungle region straddling Colombia and Panama, jumped by 51 percent from August to September (from 16,603 to 25,111). Panama has yet to post final September numbers.

Much of the increase appears to be Venezuelan citizens choosing to migrate after the regime in Caracas refused to recognize an apparent opposition victory in July 28 elections. The increase is also happening despite the July inauguration of a new president in Panama, Raúl Mulino, who promised during his campaign to shut down Darién Gap migration and step up deportations. Between early August and October 5, according to Witness at the Border, Panama has carried out 16 flights removing 634 people, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of total migration.

25,111 migrants in a month is still low by the standards of the past few years: the third-smallest monthly total since February 2023. Migration fell after Mulino took office on July 1, but the September data seem to indicate that this lull is ending. It remains unclear whether the increase would once again reach more than 1,200 people per day, which was the Darién average between July 2022 and June 2024.

• Juan Zamorano, “Migration Through Darien Gap Increased in September, Led by Venezuelans After the Election” (Associated Press, Associated Press, October 10, 2024).

President Mulino’s administration is allowing Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to return to the Darién Gap region to provide health services at posts receiving migrants at the end of the route. Panama’s previous government withdrew permission for MSF to operate in March, shortly after the group publicly denounced a sharp increase in the number of patients who suffered sexual violence while transiting the Darién.

• “Medicos Sin Fronteras Regresara al Darien” (Tal Cual (Venezuela), October 10, 2024).

“We have removed more people last year than we have since any year since 2010,” Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) official performing the duties of the commissioner, Troy Miller, said during a visit to the Arizona border reported by the Tucson Sentinel.

Miller added that 85 percent of all people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry now face expedited removal proceedings. Data show that 51 percent of Border Patrol’s apprehended migrants in August were going to expedited removal, up from 25 percent in May, before the Biden administration’s June asylum restriction rule went into effect. This is not 85 percent; however, 82 percent of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol in August were not released into the U.S. interior.

Miller said that ports of entry are now using scanners to inspect 50 percent of cargo. In March, Miller told NBC News that CBP was able to scan 20 percent of commercial vehicles, but hoped to get to 70 percent by the end of 2025.

• Paul Ingram, “In Nogales, Cbp Head Praises Agency ‘Fight’ for Stemming Migration at U.S. Border, Dismantling Fentanyl Rings” (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), October 10, 2024).

In Tijuana, Paola Morales, who heads a migrant rights defense group called Colombians in Baja California, said she was filming some detained migrant families in the city’s airport when an official from Mexico’s migration agency (National Migration Institute, INM) said, “Venezuelan and Colombian whores, we are going to cut you up… you little b—, if you publish that video we are going to wrap you up in plastic.”

• “Activista Colombiana-Denuncia-Amenazas de Muerte por Personal-del-Inm” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), October 10, 2024).

After 15 suicides of Border Patrol agents in 2022, the agency “overhauled its approach to mental healthcare for employees,” including hiring licensed clinicians, Anna Giaritelli reported at the Washington Examiner. Annual suicide totals have fallen to the single digits.

• Anna Giaritelli, “How Largest Us Police Department Is Reducing Suicides of Border Personnel” (The Washington Examiner, October 10, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The American Immigration Council (AIC) published an explainer about the Shelter and Services Program (SSP). This program reimburses local governments and charities that help to receive recently arrived migrants and prevent them from ending up on U.S. cities’ streets. After two devastating hurricanes, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and other politicians have been alleging that the SSP has diverted funds away from FEMA’s disaster response; the AIC piece debunks that claim.

• “FEMA’s Role in Migrant Assistance: Exploring the Shelter and Services Program” (American Immigration Council, October 10, 2024).

Guardian writer Oliver Laughland traveled to the Arizona border region, visiting a pro-Trump event, humanitarian volunteers in the desert, and a Democratic congressional candidate. The article points to a rightward shift in the region’s mood on border and immigration policy.

• Oliver Laughland, “Immigration Is the Toxic Issue Defining the Us Election. In Arizona, the Debate Is Deadly” (The Guardian (Uk), October 11, 2024).

Writing at the Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein noted how this harder-line shift in public opinion has led Kamala Harris to respond to some of Donald Trump’s most aggressive and racist comments about immigration “cautiously, and in a tone more of sorrow than of anger.” Harris, the article adds, “has almost entirely avoided any direct discussion of Trump’s most militant immigration ideas” like a mass deportation campaign. Brownstein called for more forceful confrontation of such language to forestall a wave of xenophobia like the United States experienced after World War I.

• Ronald Brownstein, “Kamala Harris’s Muted Message on Mass Deportation” (The Atlantic, October 10, 2024).

At the Border Chronicle, Todd Miller interviewed researcher Sarah Towle, author of the recently published Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, based on more than 100 interviews in the border region. “The real crisis at the U.S. southern border is not the people coming across, but the hardening of the human heart,” Towle said.

• Todd Miller, “The Border as a Many-Headed Hydra: A Q&A With Sarah Towle” (The Border Chronicle, October 10, 2024).

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Developments

A Yahoo News / YouGov poll found contradictory views of border and migration policy among U.S. respondents. Fifty-one percent agreed with Donald Trump’s statement that “It’s a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land.” At the same time, though, 73 percent agreed with Kamala Harris’s statement: “I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane. We can and we must do both.”

Forty-nine percent favored “rounding up, detaining and expelling millions of undocumented immigrants,” 37 percent favored moving U.S. troops from overseas to the border, and 52 percent supported building more border walls. However, 51 percent support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants.

• Andrew Romano, “Yahoo News/Yougov Border Poll: Voters Say Trump Would Do a ‘Better Job’ on Immigration — but They Prefer Harris’s Plans” (Yahoo, October 9, 2024).

In what he calls “one of the most dramatic swings in the history of U.S. public opinion,” Rogé Karma at the Atlantic pointed out that the share of U.S. respondents telling the Gallup polling organization “that immigration should decrease” has risen from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent now. This shift has hardened both parties’ rhetoric during the 2024 election campaign.

• Roge Karma, “The Most Dramatic Shift in U.S. Public Opinion” (The Atlantic, October 9, 2024).

The foreign minister of Honduras stated that U.S. aerial deportations of Honduran citizens fell 35 percent from 2023 to 2024. This decline corresponds with a 35 percent drop in Border Patrol apprehensions of Honduran citizens at the U.S.-Mexico border, comparing an average month in fiscal 2023 to an average month in fiscal 2024 (for which 11 months of data are available).

• Kelly Ortez, “¿Disminucion de Migrantes Retornados Sera Senal de Menos Migracion de Hondurenos?” (Criterio (Honduras), October 9, 2024).

The Southern Border Communities Coalition and the Sierra Club filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a lower-court ruling prohibiting the Biden administration from using appropriated funds to remediate environmental damage caused by border wall construction.

• “Southern Border Communities Coalition, Sierra Club, and Aclu Appeal General Land Office Case to Defend Border Wall Remediation Settlement” (Southern Border Communities Coalition, October 9, 2024).

Donald Trump said that if elected, he would bring into his administration Tom Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) known for his hard-line, pro-deportation views. Homan ran ICE during the 2017-2018 family separation controversy at the border. In 2023, Homan told the Conservative Political Action Conference: “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the family separation… I don’t give a s***, right? Bottom line is, we enforced the law.”

• Flynn Nicholls, “Donald Trump Says Project 2025 Author “Coming on Board” if Elected” (Newsweek, October 9, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

After 30 years of “tough” border policies that have not discouraged people from migrating, Vicki Gaubeca of Human Rights Watch wrote at The Nation, “It’s time for U.S. leaders to acknowledge the folly of policies aimed at deterring immigration and to rethink how borders can be managed in a way that respects human rights.” The current drop in migrant numbers at the border, Gaubeca argued, is temporary: “the pendulum eventually swings back, no matter how much pain our policies inflict.”

• Vicki B. Gaubeca, “‘Tough’ Border Policies Don’t Work. It’s Time Harris and Trump Accepted That.” (The Nation, October 10, 2024).

Cuba’s El Toque spoke with Cuban citizens who applied to enter the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for up to a combined 30,000 people per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. They found the parole procedure so backlogged that it was faster to go to Mexico and wait several months for a CBP One appointment at the border.

• Alberto C. Toppin, “Parole Humanitario para Cuba: ¿Que Han Vivido Quienes Esperan?” (El Toque (Cuba), October 10, 2024).

The administration revealed last week that recipients of the two-year humanitarian parole status will be unable to renew it. A Voice of America article pointed out that most Cuban parole recipients can apply for adjustment of status under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 after they have been in the United States for a year, while Venezuelans who arrived before July 2023 can apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Nicaraguan parole recipients arrived after their countries’ cutoff date for TPS; applying for asylum within a year of arriving in the United States may be an option for remaining in the United States with documented status, if they can prove credible fear of persecution upon return to their countries.

• Salome Ramirez Vargas, “¿se Vence el Parole Humanitario? Estas Son Otras Opciones Migratorias en Eeuu” (Voz de América, Tal Cual (Venezuela), October 9, 2024).