With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
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THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:
A double crackdown—Mexico’s stepped-up blocking of migrants and the Biden administration’s June 5 asylum-restriction rule—has brought a sharp short-term downturn in the number of migrants seeking to cross the border between ports of entry. Border Patrol apprehensions dipped below 1,500 on July 22, nearing the threshold under which the June 5 rule could be suspended.
Ten migrants drowned to death in a rain-swollen river while attempting to cross the treacherous Darién Gap in Panama. The country’s new president, who had pledged to stop Darién migration through stepped-up deportations, said that U.S.-backed repatriation flights would be voluntary.
Shortly after Joe Biden’s July 21 withdrawal from the presidential campaign, opponents took aim at the border and migration record of his virtually certain successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, widely referring to her as the Biden administration’s “border czar.” No such position existed, and Harris’s role encompassed only “root causes” of migration from Central America. Nonetheless, a resolution that passed the Republican-majority House of Representatives on July 25 “strongly condemns” Harris’s performance in the putative “border czar” role.
For the second time, a state judge ruled against a Texas state government attempt to prosecute a border-area migrant shelter. State government jailings of migrants under “Operation Lone Star” are costing counties like El Paso millions of dollars. The National Guard Bureau’s chief says that “Lone Star” deployments are hurting the force’s military readiness. And despite the “Lone Star” crackdown, Border Patrol apprehensions have dropped only slightly more in Texas than they have in Democratic Party-governed Arizona.