Signs of an uptick in Darién Gap migration. Harris-Walz campaign position document upholds recent asylum restrictions.

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Developments

Panama’s National Migration Service posted on the morning of September 9 that 244,243 people had migrated through the Darién Gap. That means 6,058 people passed through the treacherous region during the first 8 days of September: 757 per day, which is 41 percent more than August’s average of 536 per day.

The Harris-Walz campaign published a document outlining Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s policy positions. On the border and migration, the document backs the “Border Act,” the product of a compromise with Republicans that failed in the Senate in February, calling it “the strongest reform in decades.” It adds that this bill “would have deployed more detection technology to intercept fentanyl and other drugs and added 1,500 border security agents to protect our border.”

The document does not mention the Border Act’s intent to change U.S. law to place asylum out of reach between ports of entry at moments when migrant apprehensions are high. A June White House rule implemented a similar asylum restriction; the campaign document does not specifically mention that, but notes that Vice President Harris “and President Biden took action on their own—and now border crossings are at the lowest level in 4 years.”

In tonight’s presidential campaign debate, Donald Trump “is almost certain to lob many of his criticisms of Harris on the issue of border security,” observed a USA Today analysis.

On the Trump campaign’s side of things, the former president’s migration advisor, Stephen Miller, promised a “100% perfect deportation rate at the border,” using “Title 42/Safe 3rds/Remain in Mexico/Asylum Bars” if Trump is elected, in a Twitter exchange with billionaire Mark Cuban. The campaign and other Republican surrogates amplified false and racist rumors that Haitian migrants were consuming people’s pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio.

The House Judiciary Committee’s Republican majority is holding two “Biden-Harris border crisis” hearings today: one on “victim perspectives” and one on “noncitizen voting.”

The Embassy of India in Mexico issued an advisory warning Indian citizens against travel in Mexico, citing the likelihood of prolonged detentions and deportations by Mexican forces, after three years of increasing numbers of Indian citizens passing through the country as they seek to migrate to the United States.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said that he would defy an International Boundary and Water Commission order to dismantle “sediment bridges” and concertina wire that the state’s security forces built on Fronton Island, which lies in the Rio Grande in Starr County, south Texas.

Analyses and Feature Stories

The dangerous, organized crime-dominated passage across Mexico leaves migrants with post-traumatic stress. Kidnappings are the biggest trigger, a Ciudad Juárez-based lawyer with Jesuit Refugee Service told EFE. An anti-kidnapping organization reported two mass kidnappings of a total of 36 migrants, and 196 migrant kidnappings overall, just in July in Chihuahua, the state that includes Ciudad Juárez.

“The preservation of borders in the face of climate catastrophe, global conflict, and regular economic crises will require ever greater internal and external violence,” warns Jake Romm in a Nation review of John Washington’s 2024 book The Case for Open Borders.

On the Right