Adam Isacson

Still trying to understand Latin America, my own country, and why so few consequences are intended. These views are not necessarily my employer’s.

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Migration

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: June 2, 2023

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.

Border Updates will pause for the next two weeks as staff take vacation time. We will resume publication on June 23.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Very preliminary data indicate that, following a sharp fall in the days after the Title 42 policy’s end, numbers of U.S.-bound migrants have either flattened out or begun to increase again. Shelters are full in much of Mexico, meanwhile, where authorities continue to move large numbers of migrants toward the country’s southern border.

Asylum seekers who have been unable to secure “CBP One” appointments have begun lining up, for days at a time, at ports of entry in Nogales and Tijuana. The situation resembles CBP’s practice of “metering”—limiting asylum seekers’ access to ports of entry, and only allowing a small number per day to be processed—which a federal court declared to be illegal in 2020.

A few more details have emerged about the May 18 death of Raymond Mattia, a 58-year-old man shot multiple times by Border Patrol, while apparently unarmed, in the front yard of his house in the Tohono O’Odham Nation Reservation in Arizona. Family and friends have held protests and are pushing for accountability.

The Full Update

What we know about post-Title 42 migration

Three weeks have passed since the end of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy, which expelled migrants 2.8 million times from the U.S.-Mexico border over 38 months, regardless of asylum needs. Contrary to many predictions, the period following Title 42’s end saw a sharp drop in the number of migrants encountered at the border, from an early May high of over 10,000 per day to a mid-May low of less than 3,000 per day. (See WOLA’s May 19 Border Update.)

This drop is unlikely to persist for long, and early indications point to the number of migrant encounters already beginning to recover after touching their lowest level.

The quick drop after May 11, the last day of Title 42, likely owed to migrants adopting a “wait and see” stance amid uncertainty about the Biden administration’s new policies. On May 10, the departments of Homeland Security and Justice put in place a new administrative rule curtailing access to asylum, with a few exceptions, for all non-Mexican migrants (1) who were not first rejected for asylum in another country through which they passed, and (2) who did not make an appointment at a land port of entry (official border crossing) using CBP’s smartphone app, CBP One. Citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who meet both of those conditions may be deported into Mexico.

Lacking clarity about how this rule will play out, migrants who intend to seek asylum are crossing in much smaller numbers, at least for now. But very partial data seem to point to overall migration numbers ticking up slightly during the final days of May.

Along the route that U.S.-bound migrants take, most countries’ migration authorities share monthly data within two or three weeks after a month ends. As we await this data, we have partial clues about what post-May 11 migratory flows have looked like. The few available indicators, though, mostly uphold the idea of a reduction in migration followed by a gradual increase.

In the United States, Border Patrol Chief Raúl Ortiz’s Twitter account shares periodic updates with some of the agency’s enforcement statistics from previous days. During May, these show Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions rising during the first third of the month, falling during the second third, and leveling off or even recovering a bit during the final third.

Ortiz’s “past week” tweets show a continuous decline since May 11: a per-day average of 7,850 apprehensions on May 6, 9,680 on May 12, 4,068 on May 19, and 3,149 on May 26. However, a “past 96 hours” tweet posted May 30 showed a daily average higher than what it was in Ortiz’s two previous updates: 3,396 apprehensions per day. That is 16 percent more than what the Chief had reported in a “past 72 hours” tweet 8 days earlier, on May 22 (2,917).

We have close to real-time data from Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, thanks to a “dashboard” that El Paso, Texas’s municipal government posts to its website. That resource does not show any increase in migration during the latter days of May. It shows 7-day averages of 1,522 Border Patrol migrant apprehensions per day during the week ending May 14, 734 per day the week ending May 21, and 672 per day the week ending May 28. As of May 31, the 7-day average in El Paso had dropped to 543.

The leveling-off, or slight increase, indicated by Chief Ortiz’s tweets does not appear to be happening in El Paso.

Honduras is the only country along the migration route that publicly shares data in something close to real time. Its early data do appear to point to some recent increase in migration transiting Honduras, after only a modest decline.

The number of migrants registering with Honduran authorities reached an average of 918 per day on May 1-10, the end of the Title 42 period. That fell to 805 per day the following week, and 690 the week after that. Interestingly, the drop from post-Title 42 week 1 to week 2 was entirely Venezuelan: the population of non-Venezuelan migrants actually increased.

Then, during the final four days that Honduras reports—May 25-28—the daily average increases once again, to 737 per day. Much of the increase is Venezuelan migration.

Read More

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: May 26, 2023

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.

This Week in Brief:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released two notices this week about fatal incidents involving Border Patrol. Anadith Tanay Reyes Álvarez died on May 17, her 9th day in Border Patrol custody in Texas. Her mother said her appeals for medical assistance did not get a timely response. On the evening of the 18th, agents shot a 58-year-old member of the Tohono O’odham nation multiple times in southern Arizona. The shooting was captured on agents’ body-worn cameras.

Even as post-Title 42 migrant arrivals slow at the U.S.-Mexico border, the picture inside Mexico is confusing. Mexican authorities have temporarily closed some migrant detention centers while moving migrants from its northern and southern border zones to the nation’s interior. In Mexico City, the closure of a municipal shelter has left hundreds of migrants occupying a park near the offices of the government’s refugee agency.

April 2023 was the third-heaviest month ever for migrants transiting the Darién Gap, a treacherous jungle region straddling Colombia and Panama. 63 percent were from Venezuela. As the U.S., Colombian, and Panamanian governments carry out a “60-day surge campaign” launched April 20, senior Biden administration officials are considering sending U.S. military personnel.

Documents obtained by CBS News show more than 1.5 million people in the United States have signed up to sponsor migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, for a new  humanitarian parole program that accepts 30,000 people per month. The largest number of applications are for Haitians.

 

The Full Update

CBP reports two fatal incidents involving Border Patrol

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released two notices this week about fatal incidents involving Border Patrol: one in the agency’s custody, and one in a use of force incident.

On May 21, CBP offered some information about the May 17 death of an eight-year-old Honduran girl in a Border Patrol facility in Harlingen, Texas. Anadith Tanay Reyes Álvarez died—possibly of influenza, though medical examiners have not yet issued a finding—on her family’s ninth day in custody. Her parents had provided documents to Border Patrol showing she suffered from a heart condition and sickle cell anemia.

The family had turned themselves in to Border Patrol in Texas on May 9, two days before the Title 42 pandemic expulsion policy came to an end, a time when Border Patrol was apprehending more than 10,000 people per day. This may have prolonged the family’s time in custody, although the Associated Press reported that by May 14, the average time in custody border-wide had fallen to 77 hours while the rate of new apprehensions dropped rapidly. Under normal circumstances, migrants are meant to spend no more than 72 hours in Border Patrol’s austere holding facilities.

Read More

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: May 19, 2023

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.

This week:

The days after May 11, when the Title 42 policy came to an end, saw migration at the border reduce by more than half from a week earlier. Migrants and smugglers, unclear about the implications of new Biden administration limits on asylum, appear to be in “wait and see” mode, while Mexico and other countries have increased their security-force presence along the migration route. Some indicators point to the lull being temporary.

CBP reported a 10 percent increase in the number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border from March to April. Much of the increase was due to citizens of Venezuela, who appeared to face a lower probability of Title 42 expulsion into Mexico than in prior months. CBP gave asylum seekers an average of 743 “CBP One” appointments per day at ports of entry.

Despite a lack of government reporting, a reading of CBP port-of-entry arrival data seems to indicate that Haiti is the nationality that has most frequently gained humanitarian parole into the United States, under a recently launched Biden administration program for four countries, in March and April. Haitian parolees are followed by citizens of Cuba, Venezuela (whose numbers are declining), and Nicaragua.

San Diego-area advocates filed a strongly worded, vividly illustrated complaint with DHS about Border Patrol’s recent practice of leaving asylum seekers to wait for days—with minimal food, water, shelter, or medical attention—between the border wall’s two layers.

Migration declines in the days after Title 42’s end

In the four days leading up to May 11, the final day of the Title 42 pandemic expulsion authority, the number of migrants whom U.S. authorities encountered at the border averaged 10,100 per day. After May 11, amid uncertainty about how the Biden administration would carry out its new restrictions on access to asylum, unauthorized entries at the border dropped 56 percent, to 4,400 per day.

The numbers come from Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez Neto, who told reporters on May 17 that they include a 98% drop in the number of Venezuelan migrants ending up in Border Patrol custody. (As noted below, Venezuelan migrant encounters between ports of entry had leapt upward in April.)

“At Gate 42 of the border wall with El Paso, the number of migrants arriving has dwindled since Friday,” the New York Times reported. The Washington Post reported that 21,000 migrants were in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody on May 15, “down about 30 percent from last week’s peak.” This is despite a Florida federal judge’s temporary restraining order prohibiting CBP from releasing migrants without notices to appear, a faster process used during times of overcrowding.

Nuñez Neto attributed the drop to “the consequences that we have strengthened and put in place for unlawful entry.” These include the Biden administration’s new rule mostly banning asylum for non-Mexicans who fail to make an appointment or be rejected for asylum in at least one other country, as well as expanded use of “expedited removal” procedures forcing asylum seekers to defend their cases within days. Among reasons for the decline in migration, Nuñez Neto also cited new legal pathways for some migrants, like humanitarian parole and the CBP One smartphone app, as well as “the actions of our foreign partners”—especially increased deployments of security forces in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and Colombia.

Nuñez Neto said on May 15 that the U.S. government had already deported 2,400 people under the new “transit ban” rule, most of them Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans—but also some Mexicans—back across the border into Mexico. Mexico, in turn, has begun transporting these deportees to its southernmost states, away from the U.S. border. A tweet from CBP praised a Mexican government flight that transported Venezuelan migrants from Reynosa, across from Texas, to “interior parts of Mexico.”

Mexico also deployed 690 more members of its armed forces and National Guard—for a total of 26,535—to its northern and southern borders. State police forces in border states like Chihuahua also increased their presence.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official warned that “it is still too early to draw any definitive conclusions” about migration patterns. A key cause of the post-May 11 drop is a temporary condition: migrants’ confusion about the administration’s new policies.

As WOLA explained in a column published by MSNBC, the drop owes in large part to migrants, and smugglers, adopting a “wait and see” stance as the administration rolls out its new measures. “It’s not surprising that migrants who’ve reached Mexico are pausing before taking a leap into the unknown,” we wrote, noting that past “wait and see” moments brought sharp reductions in migration in 2014, 2017, and 2020, only to be followed soon after by increases. Something similar is likely to happen in the coming months.

Social media—which often includes a heavy dose of misinformation—plays a greater role than ever in migrants’ “wait and see” calculations. They “have increasingly turned to TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites not just for the comfort of family contact but also for updates on the policy change and how it might affect them,” Marisa Gerber reported at the Los Angeles Times. “The hashtag #titulo42 was viewed more than 109 million times on TikTok by Friday afternoon,” the Washington Post reported.

In Mexico’s border cities, shelters appear to be emptier: at about 40 percent capacity, perhaps, in Ciudad Juárez. Evidence that the drop in migration may be fleeting, however, comes from areas further south in Mexico and elsewhere along the northbound route, where numbers remain high. UNHCR Mexico tweeted its concern on May 17 about migrant shelters in the country’s south, which are reaching capacity. “In addition to the people arriving from the south, some shelters have already received Venezuelans deported from the United States, who have no information about their process, and face a lack of reception capacity in Mexico and uncertainty about their legal (or migratory) status.”

A consular official cited in Mexico’s La Jornada reported “a lot of people entering through the border between Guatemala and Honduras” on May 12. “There we saw the International Red Cross, UNHCR and IOM, with camps. There is a lot of movement of people. The city of Esquipulas [Guatemala]… was full of people going north.”

 

Migration increased slightly in April, Title 42’s last full month

CBP reported on May 17 that the agency encountered 211,401 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in April, the last full month of the Title 42 policy. That is the 9th-largest monthly total of the Biden administration’s 27 months, and a 10 percent increase over March (191,956).

Some of that increase is seasonal. The milder spring months are often the busiest of the year for migration at the border. Two thirds of April’s encounters were with single adults, whose numbers increased 5 percent over March. People arriving as family units increased 28 percent, while unaccompanied children decreased 7 percent.

Read More

At MSNBC: Here’s why the end of Title 42 wasn’t the nightmare Republicans said it would be

Migration numbers plummeted at the U.S.-Mexico border after May 11, when Title 42 ended. Don’t expect them to stay low, I wrote in a piece published at MSNBC’s website.

Essentially, migrants — and the network of smugglers along the route between countries of origin and the United States — are in “wait and see” mode. They are uncertain about what President Joe Biden’s administration’s tough-sounding new policies will mean for them. A new rule, called the “transit ban,” is making it much harder for people to apply for asylum simply by turning themselves in to U.S. agents. (This new rule is already being challenged in court on the grounds that it is illegal.)

The new border rules are strict and complicated. How much harder it will be to apply for asylum and what happens to people after they’re rejected remain very unclear. It’s not surprising that migrants who’ve reached Mexico are pausing before taking a leap into the unknown.

Read the whole thing here.

From WOLA: 10 Things to Know About the End of Title 42

What a week last week was. I was just back from Honduras, I had an all-day staff planning retreat Wednesday, and I drove from Washington to Massachusetts and back on Thursday and Friday, as my daughter finished her first year of college.

And, oh yes, Title 42 ended on May 11th.

Things were so busy that, while I managed to write this commentary for WOLA’s site as fast as I could type it, I never actually posted a link to it here, at my personal site.

A week later, this piece has almost exactly 40,000 “unique pageviews” and about twice that many “pageviews,” according to WOLA’s Google Analytics account. That definitely breaks my career record, at least for writings where I’ve seen the stats.

Here’s the summary. The entire analysis, with lots of graphics, is here.

10 Things to Know About the End of Title 42

by Adam Isacson

Summary

May 11 is the final day for the Trump and Biden administrations’ “Title 42” policy, which undid the basic right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border for 38 months.

Now, 2.8 million migrant expulsions later, the U.S. government is reverting to immigration law as it existed before the world went into lockdown. But as it does so, the Biden administration is adding a new limitation on asylum that, with Mexico’s cooperation, promises to continue the pandemic-era practice of sending asylum seekers away from the United States, placing many in danger.

Media coverage is anticipating a wave of migration at the border, with headlines proclaiming that officials are “bracing for an influx.” Legislators are seeking new ways to block asylum seekers, citing “chaos.” Such concerns are misplaced.

Migration will increase, just as it did before each of Title 42’s earlier, abortive expiration dates. But the post-May 11 increase is likely to be neither giant nor long-lasting. After all, Title 42 hardly deterred migration in the first place: it’s at or near record levels already, right now. And the Biden administration is working, with the Mexican government’s collaboration, to keep asylum out of reach to an extent that may resemble what we’ve already seen over the past 38 months.

Instead of a “migrant wave,” we should be concerned about:

  • A questionably legal “asylum transit ban” rule, about to go into effect, that could endanger many thousands of people who, though on U.S. soil, will be denied the legal right to seek protection. It’s not yet clear which nationalities, and which demographics, of migrants would be sent back into Mexico without that right. But if fully implemented, this rule would put asylum out of reach to an extent recalling what we saw during Title 42.
  • A worsening crisis of stranded migrants in Mexico’s border cities, resulting from the López Obrador government’s agreement to take back asylum seekers whom the U.S. government rejects, often without giving them a hearing.
  • A humanitarian crisis along the migration route, as new nationalities try to traverse treacherous regions like the Darién Gap.
  • The continued dysfunction of the U.S. asylum system, and the fragility of the tattered patchwork of alternative pathways to legal entry into the United States.

The situation at the border after May 11 may, for a time, appear disorderly. But it already has been, and it was before the pandemic began. If anything, Title 42’s lifting will make plain the need to reform our immigration system and align it with reality. And it will highlight the U.S. political system’s frustrating paralysis in the face of that challenge.

The facts on the ground bear this out. Here they are, in ten points.

Less migration? Or stranded migrants?

This talking point about a “95% drop in border migrant encounters from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” is problematic.

Why? Let’s examine encounters along the migration route, from north to south.

Here’s where the 95% comes from.

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered Between U.S. Ports of Entry

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Between Ports of Entry (Border Patrol)	47270	34596	54042	55910	57280	40470	50069	56209	78256	71656	75658	84192	11909	2052	3811

US Border Patrol’s apprehensions of these 4 countries’ migrants really did drop steeply from December—after Mexico agreed to accept Title 42 expulsions of these nationalities, and once a “humanitarian parole” option opened up for some of them.

But there’s no 95% drop anywhere else along the migration route, where people fleeing those countries have become stranded.

Since December, Mexico’s encounters with these 4 countries’ migrants are only down 42%.

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Mexico

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	7549	6601	10448	11221	8551	8071	11308	21545	22910	31047	23450	21124	12480	9859	12327

Since December, Honduras’s encounters with Cuban, Haitian, and Venezuelan migrants are up 10%.

(Nicaraguan citizens don’t need passports to be in Honduras, and thus don’t end up in Honduras’s count of “irregular” or “undocumented” migrants.)

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Honduras

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	1589	2253	7571	10703	10757	12726	10297	18504	17332	21173	15833	11666	9310	9183	12879

Since December, in Panama’s Darién Gap, migration from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela is up 250% (though down 57% from a high in October, before Mexico started accepting expulsions of Venezuelan migrants).

Chart: Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela Migrants Encountered in Panama’s Darién Gap

	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
Total	2595	2534	2723	4113	11408	12800	18885	26142	41531	45781	6723	8340	14542	14946	29186

The upshot: migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela may be down sharply at the US-Mexico border, due to aggressive Title 42 expulsions.

But the expulsions have absolutely not deterred these nations’ citizens from migrating. They’re still fleeing—but they’re stranded.

WOLA Podcast: “’We can’t deter our way out of this’: a view from the Honduras-Nicaragua border”

From here in Honduras, we recorded a new episode of WOLA’s podcast: “‘We can’t deter our way out of this‘: a view from the Honduras-Nicaragua border,” where more than 1,000 migrants per day are arriving from the south.

This is a quick reaction—and discussion of solutions—with my colleagues Maureen Meyer, Joy Olson, and Ana Lucía Verduzco, who were with me over the past few days to witness a mounting humanitarian crisis.

Here’s the text from the podcast landing page at wola.org.

This podcast was recorded in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where WOLA staff are on a field visit to research migration. Four current and former WOLA staff members—Adam Isacson, Maureen Meyer, Ana Lucia Verduzco, and Joy Olson—visited the Honduras-Nicaragua border region over the April 29-30 weekend.

While there, we saw—and spoke with—migrants who had just entered the country from the south, after a harrowing journey through Panama’s Darién Gap and a hostile reception in Nicaragua. We found:

  • Hundreds of people, from numerous countries, out in sweltering heat. Many were traveling as families, often with small children.
  • People waiting to obtain documents that would allow them to take an expensive day-long bus ride onward to Guatemala.
  • Aid workers—from the Honduran government, humanitarian organizations, and local civil society—doing their best to manage the situation and minimize harm. But struggling to do so with very limited resources.
  • A Honduran policy that refuses to detain or deport migrants in nearly all cases: a recognition of reality that has reduced the reach of organized crime.
  • Migrants regarding Honduras as one of the less arduous stretches of the U.S.-bound migrant route. Honduras is in a “sandwich” between harsher policies in Nicaragua and Guatemala.
  • A wide variety in migrants’ knowledge of what lies ahead, from the dangers of the journey, to the requirements for asylum, to the U.S. government’s confusing and ever-changing policies, pathways, and obstacles, like the “Title 42” expulsion policy that is expected to end on May 11, 2023.

Overall, we can’t help but conclude:

  • Nobody should have to go through this. What we saw is as severe as one would expect to see from people fleeing an armed conflict. People aren’t fleeing what would be defined as a “conflict”—they are fleeing a 21st century phenomenon of their countries becoming unlivable for a combination of reasons. What we witnessed is the result of governance failures in the region, antiquated migration policies in the United States, and a failure to cooperate and communicate all along the migration route.
  • Because of this, we’re not going to be able to deter our way out of this. Threatening ever harsher obstacles has failed in the past, it will fail now, and it will carry a terrible human toll.
  • But until we see fundamental change to U.S. migration policy, and to the conditions forcing people to leave, our communities and the migrants alike will be stuck with a patchwork of partial pathways to legal migration: from asylum to humanitarian parole to partial, inconsistent temporary worker and refugee programs.

Considering the magnitude of the crisis we witnessed at the Honduras-Nicaragua border, today’s measures are all woefully partial, and no substitute for real reform.

Download the podcast .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

Last Week Tonight: “Biden and the Border”

Don’t miss the latest “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” episode, about Title 42 and what’s coming next.

It’s a super informative report, with some delightfully vicious humor. And as you can see, they’ve got the best footnotes.

Screenshot from report, with John Oliver and a graphic of text from a recent WOLA Border Update.

At the Honduras-Nicaragua border

Hello from Tegucigalpa. We’re just back from a couple of days in the Honduras-Nicaragua border zone, in the department of El Paraíso. An extraordinary number of migrants are passing through this zone right now, most of them after passing through the Darién Gap and Nicaragua.

Here are a few photos.

Waiting for documents

The Honduran government’s “Center for Attention to Irregular Migrants” earlier today in Danlí. Large numbers of people from all over the world wait here for a document that allows them to remain in the country for five days. Honduras doesn’t deport or (except in rare cases) detain migrants, but it is impossible to board a bus to Guatemala without this document. The Danlí center has been processing a few hundred people per day, but the number was over 1,000 per day this weekend. This was the most people migrating that I’ve ever seen in one place at the same time.

Honduras was charging a steep fee (over US$200) for this travel document, but the current government has declared an amnesty, so the process is free. That keeps most from turning to organized crime to smuggle them through the country. To get the document, everyone must fill out a form and register biometric data. This is shared with databases of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which wants awareness of who is coming and whether they pose any potential threats.

In Trojes, right on the border, the Honduran migration office is closed over the weekend. People are lining up to get their travel documents, sleeping in a row of tents alongside the building, trying to avoid the broiling heat, waiting for it to reopen.

Transportation

For those with travel documents, the most frequent route through Honduras right now leads to the border with Guatemala in Agua Caliente, Ocotepeque, near Esquipulas, Guatemala. It’s a 12-16 hour trip. A bus company employee told me that about 20-25 buses per day are leaving Danlí right now for Agua Caliente, with about 50 migrants aboard each, with each migrant paying US$50.

The bus company employee outside the terminal said $50 to go to Agua Caliente, but the sign inside the terminal says $37. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Police check migrants’ documents at a checkpoint between Trojes and Danlí.

Border crossings

Peering into Nicaragua from the Las Manos border crossing. (Note the red and black Sandinista Front flags, and the absence of blue and white Nicaraguan flags.)

When migrants arrive in Trojes from Nicaragua, they usually do so at this gap in a fence along the border, near the customs post. Four Venezuelan men arrived during the few minutes that we stopped by here.

A multilingual “know your rights” sign a couple of hundred yards from that gap in the fence.

Facilities

A Center for Attention to Irregular Migrants in Trojes, run by LIFE Honduras, a consortium of humanitarian organizations with Unicef support.

Signage at a new shelter in El Paraíso run by the Fundación Alivio del Sufrimiento, a church-based organization that is a member of the Consortium.

And finally

Left to right: WOLA Program Assistant Ana Lucía Verduzco, WOLA VP for Programs Maureen Meyer, me, and Stívenson Amador, projects coordinator at the Fundación Alivio del Sufrimiento.

A Venezuelan migrant in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

After passing through the Darién Gap, Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, some U.S.-bound migrants get stranded en route as they struggle to raise money to pay bus fares.

At the beginning of this century, Venezuela was one of Latin America’s wealthier countries. Back then, the idea of its citizens using an image of their flag to evoke pity in Honduras—the 2nd or 3rd poorest nation in the hemisphere—would’ve been ludicrous.

The cost of “success”

Chart: Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Encountered At and Between Ports of Entry

	Oct-19	Nov-19	Dec-19	Jan-20	Feb-20	Mar-20	Apr-20	May-20	Jun-20	Jul-20	Aug-20	Sep-20	Oct-20	Nov-20	Dec-20	Jan-21	Feb-21	Mar-21	Apr-21	May-21	Jun-21	Jul-21	Aug-21	Sep-21	Oct-21	Nov-21	Dec-21	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23	Feb-23	Mar-23
At Ports of Entry (CBP Office of Field Operations)	2098	1404	771	402	352	262	6	20	31	39	35	36	31	25	45	36	69	264	258	291	475	777	1083	98	44	124	116	166	207	352	1340	2999	4170	5129	6512	5088	6867	6729	7154	10173	12328	10698
Between Ports of Entry (Border Patrol)	1051	1138	1832	1204	1498	1137	276	603	1180	1829	2376	3443	2640	2233	3105	4410	6225	13016	13402	17103	23519	27885	27262	40464	29431	41518	55112	47270	34596	54042	55910	57280	40470	50069	56209	78256	71656	75658	84192	11909	2052	3811

Biden administration officials might view this chart as evidence of “policy success.”

Combining Title 42 expulsions, “CBP One” appointments, and humanitarian parole brought a 95% decrease in Border Patrol’s encounters with Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants since December, and a 50% increase in the much smaller number of those able to come to ports of entry.

But a lot of the people who were in those tall green columns—many of whom may have valid asylum claims—remain in Mexican border cities. Stranded. More are coming, but since they’re not crossing the border from Mexico, this chart doesn’t show them.

Forty of these stranded people died in a fire a month ago in Ciudad Juárez. Now, in the past couple of days, 2,000 living in miserable tents in Matamoros have come under attack. The Associated Press reports:

About two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a migrant camp across the border from Texas this week, witnesses said Friday, a sign of the extreme risk that comes with being stuck in Mexico as the Biden administration increasingly relies on that country to host people fleeing poverty and violence. 

The fires were set Wednesday and Thursday at the sprawling camp of about 2,000 people, most of them from Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico, in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas. An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline.

The entire Western Hemisphere is in a moment of mass migration, as the Migration Policy Institute reminded us in a feature published last week. “The number of migrants living in the region nearly doubled from 8.3 million in 2010 to 16.3 million in 2022… Notably, much of the migration has been between countries within the region,” not to the United States.

A region-wide crisis demands that the Biden administration further expand its ability to process and fairly adjudicate this increased number of protection claims. At a time of historically low unemployment, it also requires creating more legal pathways to migration.

Right now, that can mean adjusting policies that are already in place.

  • The number of “CBP One” appointments for asylum applicants at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry, which reached 764 per day in March, needs to increase substantially to keep up with the demand in Mexican border cities, where each day’s allotment of appointments runs out in minutes.
  • The administration’s “humanitarian parole” program must loosen its passport and U.S.-based sponsor requirements, which exclude people lacking connections, who are often the most vulnerable.

Without changes like these, Mexican border cities are going to continue filling up. We’ll see more tragedies, more attacks, more bridge closures as large groups of people gather after being misled by misinformation.

The people in this chart’s tall green columns aren’t going anywhere. Most have nowhere else to go. The pressure is going to keep building.

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: April 21, 2023

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.

Due to upcoming staff field research travel, WOLA will not produce Border Updates on April 28 and May 5. Updates will resume on May 12.

This Week:

  • March data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) found that migration at the U.S.-Mexico border increased by 23 percent over February. Some of the principal increases came from nationalities in South America and beyond the Western Hemisphere.
  • With the Title 42 order approaching a possible May 11 end, Mexican border cities are seeing increasing migrant arrivals and the Biden administration is preparing to roll out new restrictions on access to asylum at the border.
  • Details have yet to emerge about a two-month plan, agreed by the governments of the United States, Colombia, and Panama, to curtail migrant smuggling through the treacherous Darién Gap region.
  • The U.S. Congress held six committee hearings relevant to border issues this week, while Republican legislators conveyed plans to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the situation at the border. The House Judiciary Committee passed a hard-line border and migration bill that may not even have enough Republican votes to pass the House, much less the Democratic-majority Senate.

Migrant encounters rise 23 percent from February to March

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data on April 17 about its “encounters” (regular apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions) with undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border during March 2023. It revealed that CBP and its Border Patrol component encountered migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border 23 percent more often in March than in February.

Combining migrants taken into Border Patrol custody between land ports of entry (POEs, or border crossings), with migrants who came to the POEs, CBP counted 191,900 encounters with migrants in March, up from 156,138 in February. “Of these,” CBP reported, “single adult encounters increased by 19 percent compared to February, unaccompanied children increased 14 percent, and family unit individuals increased by 38 percent.”

Migrants whom Border Patrol itself encountered, between the POEs, totaled 162,317, up 25 percent from 130,024 in February. CBP pointed out that, though this is an increase, the March total was 23 percent smaller than in March 2022 (211,181) and 4 percent smaller than March 2021 (169,216).

This was the first month-to-month increase in migration since December. In January, the Biden administration and Mexico’s government expanded the number of nationalities whose citizens could be expelled into Mexico under the Title 42 pandemic authority; this caused a sharp drop in migration that month, which is now reversing.

U.S. border authorities used the Title 42 authority 87,661 times in March to expel migrants, usually into Mexico. That was the largest expulsion total, and the second-largest expulsion percentage (46 percent), since June 2022.

Much of the monthly increase owed to seasonal patterns, as March is usually a busier month at the border due to milder weather. The number of migrants increased for most nationalities from February to March, with Mexico, Colombia, India, Venezuela, and Peru all measuring increases of 2,500 or more.

For the first time, Colombia was the number two nationality of migrants encountered at the border. Citizens of Peru, who like Colombians are not subject to Title 42 expulsion into Mexico, rose to fifth place.

Read More

March migration at the U.S.-Mexico border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data this evening about its “encounters” (regular apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions) with undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border during March. Here are a few graphics illustrating key trends.

CBP and Border Patrol encountered migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border 23% more often in March than in February. Much of the variation was seasonal: March is usually busier due to milder weather.

The nationalities that increased by more than 2,500 migrant encounters from February to March were Mexico, Colombia, India, Venezuela, and Peru.

U.S. border authorities used the zombie Title 42 authority 87,661 times in March to expel migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s the most expulsions in a single month since last June.

Here’s the nationalities of migrants taken into CBP and Border Patrol custody at the US-Mexico border in each of the past 3 months.

Notable:

– Colombia is now the number 2 nationality (which may loom a bit over President Gustavo Petro’s visit to Washington this week).
– Peru is now 5th.
– March saw by far the largest number of migrants from India in a single month.
– Just because Title 42 gets applied to a nationality doesn’t mean it drops in the ranking.

These tables show which countries’ migrants most often come to the U.S.-Mexico border’s ports of entry (official border crossings).

This may give a sense of which nationalities’ migrants are having at least some success with the “CBP One” app’s asylum appointments feature. It’s surprisingly consistent.

One more: March saw CBP grant the largest number yet of appointments for migrants to seek asylum at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry (official border crossings).

It averaged 764 appointments per day, virtually all of them made via the “CBP One” smartphone app.

Judging from widespread reports of frustration with the app in Mexican border cities, 764 spots a day is still just a fraction of protection needs. (These stats are from a court filing from yesterday, not CBP’s March data release.)

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: April 14, 2023

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.

Due to staff travel, we are publishing this week’s Border Update in an abbreviated format.

Biden administration to begin rolling out express asylum screenings

  • The Biden administration is rolling out, on a pilot basis, a promised program to make asylum-seeking migrants defend their cases within days of their apprehension, while still in CBP’s or Border Patrol’s austere custody conditions, in “credible fear” screening interviews conducted over telephones with asylum officers.
  • Critics (like the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind, whose analysis called it “phone booth asylum”) point out that this “expedited removal” process resembles two programs—Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP)—that the Trump administration had employed. About 75 percent of migrants subject to these programs failed credible fear interviews; under normal conditions, about 75 percent pass. President Biden had terminated PACR and HARP upon assuming the presidency in January 2021.
  • Asylum officers, who would carry out these credible fear interviews, voiced dismay to CNN. “At this point, I can’t tell the difference between Biden immigration policy and Trump immigration policy,” one said.
  • The administration is meanwhile pausing its slow rollout of a mid-2022 rule designed to speed the asylum process, the Los Angeles Times revealed. Officials said “the pause is a temporary measure designed to ensure that the country’s immigration agencies are prepared for a potential increase in border crossings after the end of Title 42,” the pandemic expulsion authority slated to terminate on May 11. It is possible that many asylum officers assigned to this 2022 process are about to be instead carrying out “expedited removal” credible fear interviews.

Darién Gap migration increases 55 percent from February to March; majority of migrants are Venezuelan

  • New data from Panama’s government show that in March, 55 percent of migrants toiling through Panama’s notoriously dangerous Darién Gap region—671 people per day—were citizens of Venezuela. This is despite the Biden administration’s use, since October 2022, of the Title 42 expulsion authority to send Venezuelan migrants back to Mexico.

  • Overall migration through the Darién Gap increased by 55 percent, from 24,657 people (881 per day)in February to 38,099 people (1,229 per day) in March.

The top 10 nationalities of migrants in the Darién Gap in March 2023 were:

  1. Venezuela 20,816
  2. Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile, mostly children of Haitians) 8,335
  3. Ecuador 2,772
  4. China 1,657
  5. Colombia 1,260
  6. India 1,109
  7. Afghanistan 359
  8. Peru 261
  9. Cameroon 174
  10. Somalia 160

The top 10 nationalities of migrants in the Darién Gap since January 2022 were:

  1. Venezuela 180,577
  2. Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 55,498
  3. Ecuador 43,683
  4. Colombia 7,294
  5. India 6,637
  6. Cuba 6,174
  7. China 5,860
  8. Afghanistan 3,146
  9. Dominican Republic 2,729
  10. Bangladesh 2,230

Top U.S., Colombian, and Panamanian officials pledge a strategy in the Darién region

  • Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Southern Command Commander Gen. Laura Richardson, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power paid an April 11 visit to Panama, to meet with Colombian and Panamanian counterparts. The situation in the Darién Gap was the central subject.
  • The three countries agreed “to carry out a two-month coordinated campaign to address the serious humanitarian situation in the Darién.” One of this campaign’s goals is to “end the illicit movement of people and goods through the Darién by both land and maritime corridors.” The governments’ statement does not specify the measures they will take to achieve this strikingly ambitious goal.

Mexico’s migration agency leadership under criminal investigation for Ciudad Juárez detention facility tragedy

  • Mexico’s National Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía General de la República, FGR) has announced charges and arrests of leaders of Mexico’s migration agency (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM) for their responsibility for the deaths of 40 migrants locked inside an INM provisional detention center, in Ciudad Juárez on March 27. (See WOLA’s March 30 and April 6 Border Updates.) Those who will face charges include the INM’s director, Francisco Garduño. Garduño meets frequently with U.S. counterparts, and the INM receives significant amounts of U.S. training and other assistance.
  • Before this week, Mexican prosecutors had been seeking charges only against three low-level INM employees in Ciudad Juárez, along with a private security guard and a migrant accused of igniting the fire.
  • VICE reported on April 6 that the Ciudad Juárez detention facility had operated as a sort of “extortion center” where INM personnel held migrants until they paid $200 bribes.
  • Alejandro Solalinde, a priest who has long run a migrant shelter in Oaxaca, met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Solalinde, a vocal López Obrador supporter, has been dropping hints about the INM’s possible replacement with a new “National Commission for Migratory and Foreigners’ Affairs.”
  • Garduño, the current INM director, would not be a part of this new body, which is still pending López Obrador’s approval. López Obrazor has defended  Garduño and said he will remain in his post for now.
  • Mexico’s government began repatriating remains of the tragedy’s victims to Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. WOLA has not seen reporting mentioning repatriation of victims to Venezuela.

Misinformation and inability to secure “CBP One” appointments lead migrants to gather, again, at Juárez-El Paso border crossing

  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) closed the Paso del Norte bridge between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso for nearly three hours on April 10, after a few hundred migrants unable to secure asylum appointments with the “CBP One” app gathered near the Mexican side of the bridge.
  • CBS News reported that migrants have used the app to secure over 60,000 asylum appointments since its mid-January launch. Border Report, citing Tijuana migration official Enrique Lucero, found that Russians are by far the nationality that has had the most success in obtaining CBP One appointments at San Diego’s port of entry. “6,645 Russians have landed” CBP One asylum appointments, Lucero stated, along with “2,700 Haitians, 1,864 Mexicans and 1,844 Venezuelans.” The official said Russians have been more successful because they tend to “have better phones and can connect faster to the internet.”
  • The El Paso Times visited an abandoned building in Ciudad Juárez that “has become an anteroom for dozens of migrants trying daily—most without success—to use the CBP One digital application to seek asylum at the Southwest border.”
  • Border-wide, those stranded in Mexico and attempting to use CBP One include potentially “thousands” of citizens of Afghanistan, the Guardian reported. (Note above Afghanistan’s position among the top ten nationalities of migrants passing through the Darién Gap.)
  • “I didn’t see a protest at the bridge,” tweeted longtime Dallas Morning News reporter Alfredo Corchado, who was in Ciudad Juárez. “I saw hundreds of migrants congregating, looking at their cell phones, confused, misinformed.” Corchado said that migrants with whom he spoke were “lured by false social media posts, including one by Breitbart news, that [the] US is processing migrants.”
  • A Venezuelan migrant told Ciudad Juárez’s La Verdad, “The news was that supposedly starting April 10 they were going to do like a pilot plan in which they were going to let people in and they were going to do like a quick asylum for them.” (This may be a distorted version of the “expedited removal” pilot program discussed above, which some migrants are reportedly misconstruing as “expedited asylum.”)
  • Some migrants who spoke to Corchado cited an April 7 Breitbart article, authored by retired 32-year Border Patrol agent Randy Clark. The article claimed that Mexico was refusing Title 42 expulsions of Venezuelan citizens from Border Patrol’s sectors in El Paso and Del Rio, Texas, and that as a result, “Venezuelan nationals… will now be allowed to apply for asylum instead of being swiftly returned.” In a Twitter exchange with WOLA staff, Clark said that Border Patrol may be moving Venezuelan migrants to other sectors, where Mexico continues to accept expulsions.
  • The El Paso city government’s migration dashboard, which includes CBP data, shows no appreciable increase in CBP migrant encounters or releases of migrants into the city. It does, however, show sharp recent growth in the number of migrants in the custody of Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector. The cause of this increase is unclear; an inability to expel some migrants to Mexico could be an explanation.

Other news

  • CBP released body-worn camera footage of a March 14 incident in Arizona, a notable step for transparency. It shows a Border Patrol agent shooting and killing the apparently unarmed driver of a car, at point blank range. (Existing policy allows use of lethal force if agents or others face “an imminent threat of death or bodily injury.”)
  • Border Patrol agents shot and killed a man who had struck one agent with a “wooden club” on April 2 in rural New Mexico, CBP reported, citing a review of body-worn camera footage.
  • Volunteers leaving water, canned food, and first aid materials to prevent migrant deaths in a wilderness area east of San Diego allege that Border Patrol agents may have destroyed some of the supplies.
  • Among the thousands of children separated from their migrant parents by the Trump administration are “hundreds, and possibly as many as 1,000,” kids who are U.S. citizens, born in the United States, the New York Times reported.
  • “Seven out of ten Central American migrants who crossed the U.S. border undocumented resorted to a guide or coyote, for an average payment of at least $4,500,” according to data from the Mexican government’s Migration Policy Unit reported by La Jornada.
  • Mexico sent a delegation of cabinet-level officials to Washington on April 13 to discuss measures to combat northbound fentanyl trafficking and southbound weapons trafficking. Mexican media noted a mismatch in the level of seniority of the two countries’ delegations; the only U.S. cabinet official to meet them was Attorney-General Merrick Garland.
  • USA Today reported on a bill moving through the Texas state legislature that would pursue migrants using “roving police units consisting, in part, of ‘law-abiding citizens’—raising the specter of armed vigilantes confronting asylum-seekers at the border.”
  • During the first two months of 2023, migration continued to increase throughout the Americas, “in most borders except the United States,” which saw some decline, according to the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) April 1 Migration Trends in the Americas report.
  • IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, which has monitored migrant deaths worldwide since 2014, recorded 1,433 deaths of migrants in the Americas in 2022, the largest annual amount since its program began.

Big jump in (mostly Venezuelan) Darién Gap migration in March

In March, 55% of migrants toiling through Panama’s Darién Gap—671 people per day—were citizens of Venezuela.

This is so, even though since October, the Biden administration has used Title 42 to expel Venezuelans back to Mexico.

Top 10 nationalities in the Darién Gap in March:

  1. Venezuela 20,816
  2. Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile, mostly children of Haitians) 8,335
  3. Ecuador 2,772
  4. China 1,657
  5. Colombia 1,260
  6. India 1,109
  7. Afghanistan 359
  8. Peru 261
  9. Cameroon 174
  10. Somalia 160

Top 10 nationalities in the Darién Gap since January 2022:

  1. Venezuela 180,577
  2. Haiti (plus Brazil and Chile) 55,498
  3. Ecuador 43,683
  4. Colombia 7,294
  5. India 6,637
  6. Cuba 6,174
  7. China 5,860
  8. Afghanistan 3,146
  9. Dominican Republic 2,729
  10. Bangladesh 2,230

The source for this is the Panamanian government’s “Tránsito Irregular por Darién” tables.

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