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Developments
In an article about Texas’s state government laying razor wire down along the state border with New Mexico, Border Report revealed Border Patrol’s latest count of migrant deaths in its El Paso Sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico: 171 remains recovered in fiscal 2024 (since October). That is up sharply from 149 in 2023, 71 in 2022, and 39 in 2021.
- Julian Resendiz, “Texas Doubles Down on Razor Wire, Fencing Facing New Mexico” (Border Report, September 17, 2024).
A letter from over 75 organizations, organized by the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute, calls for improvements to the CBP One app‘s feature allowing asylum seekers to make appointments at border ports of entry. These include increasing the number of appointments, and improving protections for applicants who must spend many months in Mexico awaiting appointments. Some miss those appointments because they’ve been kidnapped by criminal organizations.
- “Letter From Over 75 Organizations and Congregations Regarding Cbp One” (Hope Border Institute, September 17, 2024).
A response to a Newsweek Freedom of Information Act request revealed that 211 CBP personnel are under investigation for serious misconduct. Accusations include “17 alleged cases of domestic violence, 11 cases of sexual assault, and 10 cases of smuggling migrants across the border,” along with 11 cases of physically abusing a detainee, and 13 cases of association with criminal gangs.
- Billal Rahman, “Exclusive: Border Agents Investigated for Smuggling, Sex Assault and Bribes” (Newsweek, September 18, 2024).
Charities that help migrants in Nogales, Arizona, were approached by an organization called “My Bright Horizon” that left brochures and offers to help migrants with transportation and lodging. At the Border Chronicle, Melissa del Bosque revealed that the group is actually “the latest phase of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s [R] controversial flight program to transport migrants into Democratic-led states.”
- Melissa del Bosque, “Florida Governor’s Controversial ‘Migrant Relocation’ Program Targets Arizona” (The Border Chronicle, September 16, 2024).
The U.S. Senate passed the “Southern Border Transparency Act,” which requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to report in more detail about paroles and releases of migrants. (DHS reporting on migrant custody and transfers has in fact improved since this bill was introduced in late 2023.) It is not clear whether this bill will move in the House of Representatives.
- “Ellen M. Gilmer @Ellengilmer on Twitter” (Twitter, September 17, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
Of 1.8 million asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants who entered the United States in 2023—both at the border and elsewhere—12 percent settled in U.S. states considered “swing” or “battleground” states for the 2024 election, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Of these, 72 percent listed addresses in those states in counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
- Shawn Donnan, “How Immigration Is Playing Out in 2024 Battleground States” (Bloomberg, September 17, 2024).
At Mother Jones, Isabel Dias noted Republican candidate Donald Trump’s use of the term “remigration” instead of “deportation” in a recent post to his social network. “The word stands in for a policy that entails the forced repatriation or mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of citizenship.”
- Isabela Dias, “Trump Just Introduced a New, Dangerous Immigration Proposal” (Mother Jones, September 17, 2024).
Republican candidates’ racist comments about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio drew a response from Haitian-American author and professor Roxane Gay at the New Yorker. “Every five years or so, there is a renewed effort to lodge ridiculous, deeply racist and xenophobic accusations against Haitian people… Trump and Vance, with their comments, have brought a renewed and naked contempt for Haitians into contemporary American discourse.”
- Roxane Gay, “The Haitian Question” (The New Yorker, September 17, 2024).
A report from the Niskanen Center looked at the causes of increased migration of citizens of India to the United States. They include religious persecution, political instability in some regions, and economic dislocations. Recently more Indian migrants have been apprehended at the border with Canada than at the border with Mexico. Routes often begin in El Salvador (which now charges a large fee for visas) and Nicaragua, but increasingly begin in Bolivia, which requires overland travel through the Darién Gap.
- Gil Guerra, Sneha Puri, “Indian Migrants at the U.S. Border: What the Data Reveals” (Niskanen Center, September 16, 2024).
“I wish this entire year at the border was just a movie. I wish it was an improbable fiction that leaders from both major political parties are competing to see who can be the cruelest,” wrote Adriana Jasso, who spent a year working with asylum seekers at the border wall with American Friends Service Committee, at the San Diego Union-Tribune.
- Adriana Jasso, “Opinion: I Spent a Year at the Border Wall. Here’s What I Wish Jd Vance Learned.” (American Friends Service Committee, The San Diego Union-Tribune, September 17, 2024).
The Texas Tribune published a brief overview of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan organized-crime group that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) designated this week as a “terrorist organization.”
- Juan Salinas Ii, Pooja Salhotra, “What You Need to Know About the Venezuelan Gang That Texas Is Targeting” (The Texas Tribune, September 18, 2024).
On the Right
- Jennie Taer, Josh Christenson, “Homeland Security Boss Alejandro Mayorkas ‘Intentionally’ Opened Southern Border: Ex-Biden Border Patrol Chief” (The New York Post, September 17, 2024).