As the election looms, in-depth reports about migration filed from Ecuador, Chiapas, Del Rio, the post-Darién Gap route through Central America, and New York.
Daily Border Links posts will end this week, on November 8, the Friday after the U.S. elections; we lack resources to maintain this tempo indefinitely. We have been producing these since last November; the archive will remain online.
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Developments
About 200 families participated in the annual “Hugs Not Walls” event organized by the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso. For a few minutes, people living in El Paso shared a moment in person with loved ones living on the Ciudad Juárez side of the border.
Reporting from coastal Ecuador, Elliot Spagat of the Associated Press documented the spike in organized crime-violence that has made many communities unlivable and populations desperate, spurring an increase in migration that made Ecuador the number-seven nationality of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2024.
Mexican migration officials “discreetly” dismantled a 500-person migrant “caravan” a few days after its members entered the southern state of Oaxaca from Chiapas. The officials reportedly told people they would be transported further into Oaxaca; while some boarded buses, migrants quoted by Milenio voiced fear that they would instead be sent back to Mexico’s southern border.
Three unnamed U.S. officials told CBS News that migration to the U.S.-Mexico border could “spike” if Donald Trump wins tomorrow’s presidential election, as migrants race to get to U.S. soil before Inauguration Day.
The Gulf Clan, the organized crime group that dominates Colombia’s entrance to the Darién Gap migration route, called on the U.S. and Colombian governments to “join a constructive dialogue” about migration, drugs, and deforestation. The group charges roughly $50 to $80 or more per person to allow migrants to enter the Darién and manages “guides” and other services on the Colombian side of the trail. Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government is conducting informal talks with the Gulf Clan about its potential demobilization.
Two Colombian migrants were killed, and another five reportedly wounded, in an apparent crossfire involving organized crime in Tecate, along Mexico’s northern border east of San Diego and Tijuana.
Along the border wall in Tijuana, the Casa del Migrante migrant shelter and the coalition Pro Defensa de los Migrantes installed an altar to commemorate migrants who have died trying to reach the United States. “In the last six years, at least 225 people have lost their lives at the border [in the area], either because of extreme weather conditions or because of the violence that stalks them,” said Father Pat Murphy of the Casa del Migrante.
Analyses and Feature Stories
A New York Times analysis concluded that the Biden administration failed to leave behind any lasting solution to the U.S. government’s “fundamentally broken” immigration system. Biden’s reform goals, the Times noted, “were stymied by the need to confront a worldwide surge of displaced people fleeing their homes and a determined Republican opposition.”
The Washington Post noted several Democratic candidates’ rightward drift on border and migration policies in closely fought legislative races.
NPR, too, noted the Biden administration’s turn away from reform and toward “enforcement, restrictions, and punishments – a strategy at times indistinguishable from the Trump administration.”
At its Immigration Impact site, the American Immigration Council explained key aspects of the “Border Act of 2024,” the oft-cited bill that failed to pass the Senate in February 2024 following months of negotiations between a group of Democratic and Republican senators. While the bill would open up some immigration pathways and preserve presidential humanitarian parole authority, it also would codify bans on asylum during busy periods, raise standards some asylum seekers would have to meet, and add funding for barrier construction and migrant detention.
At ProPublica, Emily Green reported on rampant kidnappings of migrants near Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on Mexico’s southern border en route to Tapachula. With only modest pressure from authorities, criminals are holding hundreds of migrants in livestock pens until they pay a ransom of about $75 per person. “The kidnapping is so widespread and open that migrants walk around Tapachula with stamps of a bird on their forearms as a sign that they paid the ransom.”
Green noted that the situation is worsened by Mexico’s vigorous busing of migrants to Tapachula and other southern Mexican destinations after apprehending them elsewhere in the country. Last week, the Associated Press, too, reported on this suddenly worsening kidnapping wave at Mexico’s southern border.
In an article for the Times of London, Thomas Graham illustrated Mexico’s busing policy, which has helped to reduce the number of migrants entering U.S. custody at the northern border while stranding tens of thousands in Mexico.
The Washington Post’s Arelis Hernández followed the journey of the Orasma family from Azure, Venezuela, to the United States, illustrating the political and logistical obstacles thrown in asylum seekers’ way. The family, once solidly middle class, underwent a harrowing trip through the Darién Gap and atop Mexico’s “La Bestia” cargo train, forced by Mexico’s crackdown to turn to exploitative smugglers. They documented the trip with photos and videos. The Orasmas are now in New York, struggling amid delays in obtaining a work permit.
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune profiled Joe Frank Martinez, a Democrat who is the first Latino sheriff of Val Verde County, which includes the border town of Del Rio. Martínez has come under political fire for perceived leniency toward migrants, as local political opinion has grown more hostile to them, even though border management is not part of the sheriff’s job.
In Laredo, Texas, a border city whose voters have opposed having a border wall built along its riverfront, local leaders worry about such construction happening if Donald Trump wins the election, the Laredo Morning Times reported.
At Mother Jones, Tim Murphy explained that a legal crusade against Texas border-area organizations assisting migrants, led by the state’s hardline attorney general Ken Paxton (R), stems from a conspiracy theory about undocumented migrants being registered to vote in elections.
A Politico article by Myah Ward told the story of Angelina and her father Teodoro, a Guatemalan migrant family separated for seven months by the Trump administration’s family separation policy in 2017, when Angelina was eight. Both continue to suffer trauma symptoms.
A story at the independent Nicaraguan website Confidencial made clear that after emerging from the Darién Gap jungles, migrants’ road through Central America is little, if at all, easier. What is loosely called a “humanitarian corridor” through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras is more of an effort “to ‘pass the buck’ and get rid of them as soon as possible.” Among those countries, Nicaragua is a “black hole” without a transportation policy, where officials often demand bribes to allow migrants to pass through.
“As of June 2024, around 86% of asylum-seekers, refugees, and stateless people in the Americas lived in countries highly vulnerable to climate disruptions, where limited capacity hinders effective responses and mitigation efforts,” read a UNHCR fact sheet on “Americas Climate Action.”
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