As crackdowns put the right to asylum out of reach for many migrants, July 2024 saw the fewest Border Patrol apprehensions of any month since September 2020.

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Developments

As July 2024 came to a close, the New York Times, Associated Press, and CBS News reported that Border Patrol apprehended “around 57,000” or “under 60,000” migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border during the month. While we may not know the exact count until mid-August, it appears to be by far the lowest monthly migration total of the Biden administration’s 42 months in office: the second-lowest month, June 2024, saw 83,536 Border Patrol apprehensions. July was the month of fewest migrant apprehensions since September 2020.

The drop—down from a high of 249,739 in December—owes to a Mexican government crackdown on migration that began in January, and on the Biden administration’s implementation of a June 5 rule severely limiting access to the U.S. asylum system for people who cross the border between ports of entry.

WOLA mourns the passing of Eduardo (Eddie) Canales (1948-2024) of the South Texas Human Rights Center in Falfurrias, Texas. Falfurrias is in Brooks County, where dozens of migrants perish each year trying to walk around a longstanding Border Patrol highway checkpoint. Canales pioneered the placement of humanitarian water stations in ranch land, and had been instrumental to efforts to help families locate the remains of missing loved ones. He was featured in the award-winning 2021 documentary Missing in Brooks County.

At GoFundMe, one can make a donation to support Eddie’s family and his memorial services.

Venezuelan migrants in Mexico City told the Associated Press that, as instability and repression worsen following a fraudulent July 28 election result in their home country, they fear for their relatives left behind.

CBP reported seizing 453 kilograms of fentanyl pills hidden in the frame of a utility trailer at the Lukeville port of entry in southwestern Arizona.

Hours after he gave television interviews about organized crime extortion—including the closure of 191 Oxxo convenience stores in the border city of Nuevo Laredo—gunmen shot to death Julio Almanza, the head of the business chambers federation of the border state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. The shooting happened on July 29 in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

Colombia’s army reported rescuing three in-transit migrants from India who were kidnapped for ransom and held for four days in the southwestern department of Nariño, after crossing from Ecuador.

Of 959 citizens of Ecuador interviewed by UNHCR along the US-bound migration route in 2023, 59% said they were fleeing “generalized violence” and 28% said they themselves had been victims of violence.

Meeting with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Honduras’s foreign minister, Enrique Reina, “agreed to further streamline its coordination with the United States on removals of Honduran noncitizens.” Between January and June, ICE deported Hondurans aboard 180 removal flights.

Analyses and Feature Stories

Analyses at MSNBC noted Democrats’ tactic of seeking to attack Donald Trump from the right on border security, citing Trump’s February push to scuttle passage of a Senate “border deal” bill that would have hired more Border Patrol agents and placed limits on asylum access similar to those in the Biden administration’s June 5 rule. Roll Call noted how the Trump campaign has pivoted from attacking Joe Biden for being “soft” on border security to attacking Kamala Harris for the same.

Analyses of the Fifth Circuit’s July 30 ruling allowing the state of Texas, for now, to keep its “wall of buoys” in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass note that judges’ arguments focused on the river’s navigability in that part of Texas. Only one conservative judge on the eighteen-judge panel seemed to share the Republican state government’s view that increased migration constitutes an “invasion.”