Migrant deaths hit emergency levels in New Mexico. 30 percent of Border Patrol's RVSS cameras are broken. Texas's economy depends on undocumented labor.

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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.

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.

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.

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.’”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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

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.

On the Right