Adam Isacson

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Developments

By a vote of 220-196, the Republican-majority House of Representatives approved a resolution “Strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”

Six Democrats from swing districts voted with the Republicans: Yadira Caraveo (Denver suburbs, Colorado); Henry Cuéllar (Laredo and Rio Grande Valley, Texas); Donald Davis (northeastern North Carolina); Jared Golden (rural Maine); Mary Peltola (Alaska); and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (southwestern Washington).

The resolution had originally read “on March 24, 2021, President Biden asked Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the administration’s border czar.” After Democrats in the House Rules Committee pointed out that this was factually inaccurate, the language changed to “came to be known colloquially as the Biden administration’s ‘border czar.’”

“This is like voting on a press release. What a colossal waste of time,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee.

• Stephen Groves, “House Republicans Vote to Rebuke Kamala Harris Over Administration’s Handling of Border Policy” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 25, 2024).
• “Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern on Twitter” (Twitter, July 25, 2024).

Much press coverage continues to analyze Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s border and migration record. Republican statements and advertising, meanwhile, continue to seek lines of attack on the same issue.

Media analyses point out that Harris’s role was not the “border” but addressing “root causes” of migration from Central America. A Los Angeles Times examination of Harris’s role indicated that the Vice President’s interest in the issue flagged during her tenure.

• Andrea Castillo, Kate Linthicum, Kevin Rector, Patrick J. Mcdonnell, “Republicans Frame Kamala Harris as a Failed ‘Border Czar.’ What Did She Really Do on Migration as Vp?” (Los Angeles Times, Yahoo!, July 26, 2024).
• Lauren Villagran, Rebecca Morin, “Border Politics Heat Up in White House Race: Where Does Harris Stand on Immigration?” (USA Today, July 25, 2024).
• Paola Nagovitch, “No, Kamala Harris Was Never the ‘Border Czar’” (El Pais (Spain), July 26, 2024).
• Max Cohen, “The Harris Border Ads Hit the Airwaves” (Punchbowl News, July 26, 2024).
• Stephen Dinan, “Biden Claims Credit for Low Border Encounters in Critical Political Moment for His Vice President” (The Washington Times, July 25, 2024).
• Phil Boas, “‘Border Czar’ or Not, Kamala Harris Ran From Her Job to Get the Border Under Control” (The Arizona Republic, July 25, 2024).
• Ashley Papa, Michael Ruiz, “Kamala Harris’ House Condemnation for Border Failure ‘Long Overdue but Absolutely Warranted’: Brandon Judd” (Fox News, July 26, 2024).
• Billal Rahman, “Kamala Harris ‘Owns’ Migrant Crisis, Former Border Chief Says” (Newsweek, July 26, 2024).

On a visit to the border in San Diego, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) added to attacks on what he called “the Biden-Harris border catastrophe,” adding the false talking point that undocumented migrants will play a role in voter fraud against Republicans in the November elections.

• Jasmine Ramirez, “House Speaker Visits San Diego’s Southern Border to Discuss Immigration” (KFMB, July 25, 2024).

Border Patrol has now found the remains of 140 migrants in its El Paso sector, a segment of the border stretching from the Arizona-New Mexico border to just east of El Paso, during fiscal year 2024. In all of fiscal 2023, the figure was 149 migrant deaths, a record for the sector that is certain to be broken, as the region’s scorching-hot summer is far from over.

The rising fatalities are occurring even as migrant apprehensions plummet in the sector (and border-wide). It may be that, with asylum blocked for many under the Biden administration’s new June 2024 restrictions, more people are trying to evade apprehension in the desert. The organization No More Deaths announced a new update to its El Paso migrant death map for 2024.

• Julian Resendiz, “Border Patrol Appeals to Migrant Relatives as Death Toll Now at 140 in el Paso Sector” (Border Report, July 25, 2024).

The Senate Appropriations Committee will “mark up” (amend and approve its version of) the 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill on Thursday, August 1. The bill text is not yet public.

• “Full Committee Markup of Energy and Water Development; Defense; Labor, Health, and Human Services; Homeland Security; And Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Acts” (Senate Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate, July 25, 2024).

After suffering judicial setbacks in efforts to prosecute or sue El Paso’s Annunciation House and McAllen’s Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton (R) is now going after a third respite center that receives migrants released from CBP custody. Paxton is now seeking to compel management of Team Brownsville to sit for a deposition. The hard-right state official believes that these charities, whose work prevents releases of migrants onto border cities’ streets, are encouraging undocumented migration.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Texas Attorney General Going After 3rd Border Nonprofit That Helps Migrants” (Border Report, July 25, 2024).

A CBP helicopter “made an emergency landing or crashed into Mexican territory” near Laredo yesterday evening.

• “U.S. Border Patrol Helicopter Reportedly Crashes, Lands on Mexican Territory” (KGNS (Laredo Texas), July 25, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A new report from nine U.S. organizations presented more than 30 examples of due process and human rights violations suffered by asylum seekers at the border since the Biden administration’s June 5 rule restricting asylum went into effect. Abuses include arbitrary deportations without an opportunity to seek protection in the United States; obstacles to accessing legal representation; inhumane detention conditions; and family separations.

• “Six Weeks After Biden’s Second Asylum Ban Took Effect, Advocates Report Rampant Rights Violations at U.S.-Mexico Border” (Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Hope Border Institute, Human Rights First, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, Refugees International, the National Immigration Law Center, Women’s Refugee Commission, National Immigrant Justice Center, July 25, 2024).

The outcome of Venezuela’s Sunday presidential election could have a big effect on migration from a country that has seen a quarter of its population exit since the mid-2010s. If the opposition wins, as polls predict, migration could slow and some Venezuelans could return. If the authoritarian Maduro regime declares itself the victor, migration could increase further.

• Astrid Suarez, Gisela Salomon, Nayara Batschke, Teresa Medrano, “Forced to Emigrate, Venezuelans Living Abroad Hope for Change — and to Eventually Return Home” (Associated Press, July 25, 2024).
• Dan Gooding, “Venezuelan Presidential Election Could Impact Migrants Headed to Us” (Newsweek, July 25, 2024).

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Developments

Panamanian police found the bodies of ten migrants, their nationalities not yet identified, who drowned in the Darién Gap while trying to cross a river swollen by seasonal rains. They had apparently sought to take a shorter route through the treacherous region, involving more boat travel and less walking, for which smugglers charge a higher fee.

Panama’s border police (SENAFRONT) urged migrants to cross the Darién using “the authorized passage for irregular migration leading to Cañas Blancas, where specialized patrols are available for their protection and humanitarian assistance.” Panama’s new government has sought to block some other routes with barbed wire.

• Luke Taylor, “Ten People Drown in Darien Gap While Trying to Cross Swollen River” (The Guardian (Uk), July 24, 2024).
• “Hallan 10 Cadaveres de Migrantes Que Murieron Ahogados en Panama” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), July 24, 2024).

As the Biden administration’s June 5 asylum restrictions have brought a short-term drop in migration, Mexico’s migration authority (National Migration Institute, INM) is closing a tent shelter for migrants that it had established in Ciudad Juárez in late 2023. As of earlier this month, Border Report reported, Ciudad Juárez’s migrant shelters were more than half full, housing many families awaiting the 200 daily CBP One appointments at a port of entry across the Rio Grande in El Paso.

• Julian Resendiz, “Juarez to Close Tent Refuge, as Migrants Vanish” (Border Report, July 24, 2024).

A Texas state judge ruled that Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which runs a large shelter for migrants released from CBP custody in McAllen, does not have to give a sworn deposition to state prosecutors.

Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton (R) has launched a legal offensive against charities that receive released migrants, accusing them of encouraging illegal migration. A judge in El Paso recently struck down a similar effort to investigate El Paso’s Annunciation House shelter network, which is also associated with the Catholic faith. Paxton is appealing the Annunciation House ruling, and yesterday’s Catholic Charities decision only stops the deposition, not Paxton’s larger investigation.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Judge Rules in Favor of Catholic Charities Rgv in State of Texas’ Investigation” (Border Report, July 24, 2024).
• Valerie Gonzalez, “Judge’s Order Shields Catholic Charities From Deposition as Texas Investigates Border Aid Groups” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 24, 2024).

Discussing Hamas cross-border raids into Israel before an audience of Texas sheriffs, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) added, “You can use my analogy, not to the same magnitude of course, but you can use my analogy, something that Texas law enforcement deals with” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Francesca D’annunzio, “Greg Abbott Compares Hamas Attacks to Texas Border Crossings at Sheriffs’ Conference” (The Texas Observer, July 24, 2024).

A look at Border Patrol apprehensions shows that the Texas state government’s $11 billion “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown has had little effect amid a border-wide drop in migration, and it has not pushed migration into other border states, as Gov. Abbott has claimed.

Since the record-setting month of December, after which Mexico began an aggressive campaign of blocking northbound migrants, Border Patrol apprehensions in Texas fell 82 percent by June—but they fell 70 percent in Democratic Party-governed Arizona and 67 percent border-wide.

Since January, migrant apprehensions in Arizona (-52%) have actually dropped more sharply than in Texas (-40%). From May to June, Texas fell 36 percent and Arizona 33 percent; the whole border fell 29 percent.

• Adam Isacson, “Texas’s Abusive Border Policies Haven’t Made Much Difference“ (Adam Isacson, July 24, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in border and migration policy continues to receive scrutiny. Many media outlets have clarified that, as vice president, Harris had no direct border responsibilities, and that oft-repeated Republican claims that she was a sort of White House “border czar” are false.

Harris was tasked, however, with a diplomatic effort to address the root causes of migration in northern Central America. While it is hard to link this long-term effort to short-term migration impacts, Central American migrants are among very few nationalities whose numbers have declined since 2021 at the U.S.-Mexico border. Comparing an average month in fiscal 2024 to an average month in fiscal 2021, migrant encounters with Hondurans have fallen 50 percent, with Salvadorans 39 percent, and with Guatemalans 14 percent. Border encounters with all nationalities’ migrants, meanwhile, are up 40 percent.

• Priscilla Alvarez, “Harris’ Immigration Work Comes Under Scrutiny as Campaign Takes Shape” (CNN, July 24, 2024).
• Maria Ramirez Uribe, “‘Border Czar’? Gop Talking Point Distorts Vp Harrris’ Role” (PolitiFact, July 24, 2024).
• Aline Barros, “Harris Was Never ‘Border Czar,’ Experts Say, Despite Republican Claims” (Voice of America, July 24, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Media Suddenly Changes Its Tune on Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar’ — Despite Giving Her the Title” (The New York Post, July 24, 2024).

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Developments

On a party-line vote, the Republican-majority House of Representatives’ Committee on Rules approved the chamber’s consideration of a resolution “Strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”

The legislation claims that “on March 24, 2021, President Biden asked Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the administration’s border czar.” As numerous media have pointed out, this is fully inaccurate. Biden tasked Harris with the portfolio of addressing root causes of migration from Central America. (That is a role that Biden himself had taken on in the Obama administration in 2014, after the first major wave of child and family asylum-seeking migrants from Central America arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border.) Harris did not have larger border or migration policy responsibilities.

The resolution is being rushed to the floor just days after President Joe Biden decided not to seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Harris to run in his stead.

• Emily Brooks, “House Republicans Tee Up Vote Condemning Harris as ‘Border Czar’” (The Hill, July 23, 2024).
• “Acyn @Acyn on Twitter” (Twitter, July 23, 2024).
• Dan Gooding, “Immigration Group Says Kamala Harris Has Record to Fight Gop’s Criticism” (Newsweek, July 23, 2024).

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said, and New York Times reporter Hamed Aleaziz separately tweeted, that Border Patrol apprehended fewer than 1,500 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border on July 22. (Salazar said this was the fewest in a day since 2018, which is inaccurate: the last month during which apprehensions averaged less than 1,500 per day was July 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The Biden administration’s June 5, 2024 asylum restriction rule states that, should the weekly average of migrant apprehensions drop below 1,500 per day for 3 weeks, and should the average remain below 2,500, then U.S. border authorities will no longer automatically deny asylum access to people who cross between ports of entry to ask for protection. (The administration’s May 2023 rule, denying asylum to most who fail to seek it in another country through which they passed, would remain in effect.)

• Arturo Sanchez Jimenez, “Cruces Irregulares a Eu Registran la Mayor Baja en 6 Anos: Ken Salazar” (La Jornada (Mexico), July 23, 2024).
• “Hamed Aleaziz @Haleaziz on Twitter” (Twitter, July 23, 2024).

A “caravan” of migrants—estimates range from several hundred to about 2,000—has walked about 35-40 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border to the border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. A few have walked a bit further into Chiapas, more than 1,000 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

La Jornada reported it as “the fourth largest caravan so far this year.” The participants, mostly from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, say they have been waiting for months to secure appointments with Mexican migration authorities.

Many tell reporters that their goal is to reach a part of Mexico (from Mexico City northward) where they might be able to use the CBP One app to make appointments with U.S. authorities at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. Mexico has been more aggressive this year in blocking undocumented migrants’ efforts to travel northward.

• Raul Vera, “A Group of 2,000 Migrants Advance Through Southern Mexico in Hopes of Reaching the Us” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 23, 2024).
• Julio Navarro Cardenas, “Ante Desesperacion y Violencia, Nueva Caravana Migrante Sale de Tapachula, Chiapas” (Milenio (Mexico), July 24, 2024).

When the Texas state government arrests migrants on trespassing charges under its “Operation Lone Star,” counties must pay the cost of those who end up in county-run jails. El Paso County’s commissioners unanimously approved sending a grant application to the office of Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to reimburse $8 million in costs it has incurred in holding people arrested by Texas state forces. By the end of the year, Operation Lone Star incarcerations could end up costing El Paso’s Democratic Party-governed county $18 million.

• Julian Resendiz, “Operation Lone Star Arrests Overwhelming Border County” (Border Report, July 23, 2024).

Responding to some U.S. politicians, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said that any closure of the U.S.-Mexico border “will not be allowed, and Mexico will never have a closed border.”

• Oscar Rodriguez, ““Frontera Con Mexico Nunca Sera Cerrada; No se Permitira”: Barcena” (Milenio (Mexico), July 23, 2024).

“Dozens of makeshift ladders,” most made out of rebar, “mysteriously appeared in a dumpster” near the 30-foot border wall south of San Diego, Border Report reported.

• Salvador Rivera, “Dozens of Ladders Used to Get Migrants Over Wall Discovered in Dumpster Near Border” (Border Report, July 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Congressional Budget Office, an independent investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, published a report finding that recent years’ sharp increase in migration will reduce the U.S. budget deficit by $900 billion over the 2024-2034 period. The projection is based on estimates of the number of people paying taxes and receiving benefits ($1.2 trillion in tax revenue and $0.3 trillion in demand for benefits), and of the rising migration’s effect on interest rates and U.S. workers’ productivity.

• “Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy” (Congressional Budget Office, July 23, 2024).

CNN reported from the Tohono O’Odham Nation reservation, which straddles the border between Arizona and Sonora. Its people do not recognize the borderline and have long guarded their sovereignty, but border realities like migration, smuggling, and migrant deaths have placed stress both on the Nation’s autonomy and its uneasy relationship with Border Patrol and other U.S. authorities. That relationship grew more tense after agents shot and killed an O’Odham man, Raymond Mattia, outside his house in May 2023.

• Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Evelio Contreras, Norma Galeana, “How the Us-Mexico Border Brought Trouble to the Tohono o’odham Nation” (CNN, July 24, 2024).

At Foreign Policy, Gil Guerra of the Niskanen Center and Channing Lee of the Special Competitive Studies Project punched holes into claims that large numbers of spies or saboteurs might be embedded in the increased number of migrants from China arriving at the border. Instead, they argue, the United States should view as a moral victory that so many people from a competing power are choosing the U.S. political and economic model.

• Channing Lee, Gil Guerra, “Chinese Migrants Aren’t an Invading Army” (Niskanen Center, Special Competitive Studies Project, Foreign Policy, July 23, 2024).

On the Right

• Jason Hopkins, “America’s Border Crisis Could Get Whole Lot Worse Under Kamala Harris, Experts Say” (The Daily Signal, July 23, 2024).

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Developments

The border and migration issue has become a principal Republican line of attack against near-certain Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Messaging from GOP figures, including Donald Trump, refers to the Vice President as the Biden administration’s “Border Czar,” a term that the White House never used to refer to Harris’s role as its point person for addressing root causes of migration in northern Central America.

“Joe Biden has now endorsed and fully supports his ‘Borders Czar’ Kamala Harris to be the Democrat candidate for president,” tweeted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), adding, “I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border.” The term even appears in the title of an “emergency” resolution that the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership intends to move through the Rules Committee and onto the chamber’s floor in the next day or two.

• Saul Elbein, “Abbott Threatens to ‘Triple Razor Wire’ on Border After Harris Nod” (The Hill, July 22, 2024).
• “H. Res. 1371 – Strongly Condemning the Biden Administration and Its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, Failure to Secure the United States Border.” (Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives, July 22, 2024).

CBS News, Mother Jones and other media published analyses debunking the claim that Harris was ever in a position of developing or implementing border and migration policies beyond Central America. “In reality, the only role close to that of a ‘border czar’ under the Biden administration was held for only a few months by Roberta Jacobson, a longtime diplomat who served as coordinator for the Southwest border until April 2021,” recalled Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “The Facts About Kamala Harris’ Role on Immigration in the Biden Administration” (CBS News, July 22, 2024).
• Isabela Dias, “The Myth of Kamala Harris as “Border Czar”” (Mother Jones, July 22, 2024).

While Harris’s “root causes” effort is unlikely to have been the main cause, migration from northern Central America has declined sharply since the beginning of the Biden administration. CBP encounters with citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped from 58,421 per month in fiscal 2021 to 38,657 per month (34 percent fewer) in fiscal 2024. All other major nationalities, except Nicaragua and Brazil, have increased during that period.

Harris’s critics note that she only visited the U.S.-Mexico border once during her term, and that she had not spoken to two of the Border Patrol chiefs who served since 2021. This would appear to confirm that she has played little role in border policy.

• Ryan Chandler, “Kamala Harris’ Record on Immigration and the Border” (Border Report, July 22, 2024).
• Ali Bradley, “Last 2 Border Patrol Chiefs Say Harris Has Not Spoken With Them” (NewsNation, July 22, 2024).
• Zach Despart, “Texas Gop Leaders Paint Harris as a Disaster on Border Security” (The Texas Tribune, July 22, 2024).

Two crime-ridden Mexican border regions saw shakeups of state policing capabilities. The eastern border state of Tamaulipas announced improvements to the “General Center for Coordination, Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C5)” of its troubled state police force, with new vehicles and a helicopter. The western border state of Sonora took over control of the municipal police force in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, near Yuma.

• “Renuevan c5 de Reynosa; “Ahora Esta al Servicio de las y los Tamaulipecos”: Americo” (Brand Studio, Proceso (Mexico), July 22, 2024).
• “Decretan Mando Unico Policial en Slrc para Responder a Grupos Delictivos” (Riodoce (Sinaloa Mexico), July 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Under the Biden administration’s June asylum rule, Border Patrol agents no longer ask migrants if they fear deportation to their countries. Under what is called the “shout test,” asylum seekers must voluntarily speak up and hope that the agent listens to them. The practice of asking migrants whether they feared return dated back to 1997, the Associated Press reported. Some recently deported migrants told the AP’s Elliot Spagat that agents ignored their requests to seek asylum.

• Elliot Spagat, Behind Biden’s Asylum Halt: Migrants Must Say if They Fear Deportation, Not Wait to Be Asked (Associated Press, Associated Press, Sunday, July 21, 2024).

If Donald Trump is re-elected, his pledge to carry out mass deportations would be eased by dramatic recent improvements in surveillance and artificial intelligence capabilities, warned an analysis from Context (an outlet backed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation). While removing undocumented migrants is difficult, “making people look over their shoulder—creating an atmosphere of fear, he [Trump] can do that,” said Muzaffar Chisti of the Migration Policy Institute.

• Avi Asher-Schapiro, “Trump, Armed With Tech, Could Supercharge Deportations” (Thomson Reuters Foundation, Context, July 22, 2024).

Recent polling suggests that more than 10 percent of Venezuelans may try to emigrate if authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro wins or steals this Sunday’s presidential election, noted a Los Angeles Times column from Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

• Will Freeman, “Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro Could Lose a Landslide Election. But Will It Matter?” (Council on Foreign Relations, The Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2024).

“You can have good faith disagreements about immigration and migration and especially around the border without resorting to dehumanizing the migrants themselves and without trying to say that they are all here to destroy us or that they are some sort of existential threat to the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council in an interview with Documented.

• Fisayo Okare, “At the Democratic National Convention, How Will Democrats Respond to Republicans’ Inaccurate Message on Immigration?” (Documented, July 22, 2024).

“Immigrants today account for 13.8% of the U.S. population. This is a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970. However, the immigrant share of the population today remains below the record 14.8% in 1890,” noted an updated analysis from the Pew Research Center.

• Jeffrey S. Passel, Mohamad Moslimani, “Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants” (Pew Research Center, July 22, 2024).

On the Right

• Theo Wold, “The Great Immigration Experiment” (Claremont Institute, The American Conservative, July 22, 2024).

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Developments

Border Patrol apprehended an average of 1,650 migrants per day last week, CBS News reported. If the average drops below 1,500 per day, people who cross the border between ports of entry will once again be able to apply for asylum, under the Biden administration’s June rule curtailing asylum access. The right to seek protection for those who cross between the ports would be shut down again if the daily average were to rise above 2,500 per day.

If the current tempo were to sustain for an entire month, it would be the month with the fewest Border Patrol apprehensions since September 2020, late in the Trump administration.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Migrant Crossings Continue to Plunge, Nearing the Level That Would Lift Biden’s Border Crackdown” (CBS News, July 19, 2024).
• J. David Goodman, Miriam Jordan, “Amid Talk of Border Chaos, Crossings Have Sharply Declined” (The New York Times, July 20, 2024).

An American Immigration Council blog post recalled that the Biden rule is not the only reason why migration has dropped to its current relatively low level: Since January, Mexico has pursued a crackdown with the goal of “wearing out” migrants.

The scope of Mexico’s crackdown, which involves mass busing of non-Mexican migrants away from the U.S. border deep into Mexico, was laid out in a July fact sheet by the Mexico-based Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI) and a July report from two El Paso and Ciudad Juárez-based groups, the Hope Border Institute and Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA).

• Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “Why Are Border Crossings at Their Lowest Level in Four Years?” (American Immigration Council, July 19, 2024).

Panama’s recently inaugurated president, José Raúl Mulino, said that his government would only deport migrants from the Darién Gap if they agree to voluntary repatriation. This softens Mulino’s campaign pledge to halt Darién migration by flying migrants back to their home countries after they cross the 60-70 mile jungle region. The Biden administration pledged to help Panama fund these flights.

Panama’s border service counted 11,363 migrants crossing the Darién Gap during the first half of July, one of the lowest daily averages since late 2022.

• Alma Solis, “Panama President Says Repatriation of Migrants Crossing the Darien Gap Will Be Voluntary” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 18, 2024).

Several hundred migrants—some reports claim 2,000 or even 3,000—from many countries began walking north from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. They chose to start walking en masse, some told reporters, after Mexico’s migration agency (INM) refused to give them travel documents and Mexico’s refugee agency (COMAR) proved too slow to respond to their asylum applications.

Some told the Associated Press that they feel some urgency to get to the U.S. border before a possible second Donald Trump term, when pathways like the CBP One app would probably shut down.

The group is just arriving in the southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. No “migrant caravan” has reached the U.S. border even partially intact since early 2019.

• Edgar H. Clemente, “Hundreds of Migrants Leave Southern Mexico on Foot in a New Caravan Headed for the Us Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 22, 2024).
• “Unos 3.000 de Migrantes Parten en Nueva Caravana Desde la Frontera Sur de Mexico” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), July 21, 2024).
• Julio Navarro Cardenas, “Migrantes Llegan a Tapachula, Hidalgo; Continuaran su Camino a Eu” (Milenio (Mexico), July 21, 2024).

Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the outgoing chief of the National Guard Bureau, repeated earlier criticisms of the Texas state government’s large-scale deployment of guardsmen to the state’s border with Mexico. Hokanson argued that the long-term border mission is undermining the National Guard’s readiness to carry out more traditional military missions like warfighting.

• Steve Beynon, “‘At What Cost’: Guard Chief Argues Border Mission Is Getting in the Way of Warfighting” (Military.com, July 18, 2024).

Attorneys for Border Patrol agent Dustin Sato-Smith succeeded in moving a prosecution against him from California state court to federal court, where they argue that he will be immune from prosecution. In February 2023, while performing an abrupt U-turn to respond to a report of undocumented migrants nearby, Sato-Smith collided with an uninvolved U.S. citizen aboard a motorcycle, killing him. (Despite reporting requirements, CBP did not release information about the fatal crash.) His attorneys claim that, because he was performing his duties at the time of the crash, the federal court should grant Sato-Smith immunity under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

• Alex Riggins, “San Diego-Area Border Patrol Agent Claims Immunity From Prosecution in Fatal Crash” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 21, 2024).

“He’s trying to convince everybody what a wonderful job he does in running the country. Well, he doesn’t do a wonderful job,” said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, during Trump’s marathon July 18 Republican National Convention speech. Trump attacked Bukele—who admires the former U.S. president and has cultivated ties with key Republicans—for supposedly lowering El Salvador’s crime rate by “sending” his country’s criminals as migrants to the United States. While a small number of gang members are mixed in with the Salvadoran migrant population, no proof supports the claim that Bukele is deliberately exiling them to the United States.

• Isabela Dias, “Wait, Why Did Trump Take a Jab at The “Dictator” Conservatives Love Last Night?” (Mother Jones, July 19, 2024).

Calling Donald Trump “a man of intelligence and vision,” Mexico’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that he would write Trump to warn him, if he is elected, not to close the U.S.-Mexico border or blame migrants for cross-border drug trafficking.

• “Mexican President Calls Donald Trump ‘a Friend’ and Says He’ll Warn Him Against Closing Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 19, 2024).

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, visited Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, to discuss fentanyl interdiction with U.S. and Mexican authorities. Only about 2 percent of border-wide fentanyl gets seized in the south Texas region that Kaine visited.

• Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), “Kaine Meets With Law Enforcement, International Partners in Texas to Discuss Fentanyl Interdiction at the Southern Border” (U.S. Senate, July 19, 2024).

The July 19 Microsoft / CrowdStrike global software glitch paralyzed border ports of entry, forcing people to wait several hours to cross from Mexico into the United States.

• Salvador Rivera, “Microsoft Glitch Shuts Down Border Crossings, Causes Hours-Long Delays” (Border Report, July 19, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

By busing more than 120,000 migrants to Democratic Party-governed cities, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) reshaped migration patterns and drew national attention to the border and migration issue, a New York Times feature reported. Without the paid buses, it contends, Venezuelan migrants would have been more likely to join existing communities in Florida and Texas instead of coming to New York City.

The number of migrants aboard Texas-funded buses is a single-digit percentage of the more than 3 million people, mostly asylum seekers, released into the U.S. interior since 2022. The busing program has cost Texas over $230 million, the Times reported, which would add up to nearly $2,000 per passenger.

• Edgar Sandoval, J. David Goodman, Jeremy White, Keith Collins, “Bus by Bus, Texas’ Governor Changed Migration Across the U.S.” (The New York Times, July 20, 2024).

William Murillo of the Ecuadorian organization “1-800 Migrantes” told the Guayaquil daily El Universo that people migrating from Ecuador tend to follow at least four clandestine routes: by air to Panama and the Bahamas then by boat to Florida; overland to Colombia, then flying to Central America and overland through Mexico; overland through the treacherous Darién Gap, Central America, and Mexico; and by air to Panama then overland through Central America and Mexico.

• “Cinco Rutas, las Mas Frecuentes de los Migrantes para Llegar a Estados Unidos; La Tercera, la Mas Peligrosa” (El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), July 19, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Due to staff travel, this is the last daily update for a while. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

The Biden administration’s new proclamation and rule curtailing asylum access at the U.S.-Mexico border, which it calls “Securing the Border,” went into effect at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, June 5. A leaked ICE implementation guidance is also available.

For explanations of the new rule’s provisions, implementation, and likely outcomes, see analyses from WOLA, the American Immigration Council, Human Rights Watch, the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, the Cato Institute, and a coalition of legal and human rights groups. The American Immigration Council also published an in-depth explainer.

For migrants who cross the border between ports of entry, fail to specifically ask for protection (known as the “shout test”), or cannot prove a very high standard of fear of return, the legal right to asylum is now suspended until the daily border-wide average of Border Patrol migrant apprehensions drops below 1,500.

The last month with an average that low was July 2020, in the early moments of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reporters from the New York Times and CBS News tweeted that Border Patrol apprehended about 4,300 people on Tuesday June 4 and about 4,000 on Wednesday June 5. The daily average in May, one of the Biden administration’s lightest months, was about 3,800. The Washington Post cited internal DHS projections expecting an average of 3,900 to 6,700 apprehensions per day between July and September.

Should the daily average ever drop below 1,500, the rule would suspend the asylum restriction until the average once again climbs above 2,500.

The new measures add to the Biden administration’s May 2023 “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” asylum ban, which already denied asylum to non-Mexican citizens who crossed between ports of entry, cannot prove a higher standard of fear, and did not have an asylum application turned down in another country along the way.

It is unclear whether the new rule resulted in increased returns or deportations of migrants yesterday—a briefing from DHS officials offered no numbers—and if so, how they were carried out.

• Maria Sacchetti, Nick Miroff, “Biden Announces New Asylum Cap in Bid to Deter Illegal Crossings” (The Washington Post, June 4, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “In Shift, Biden Issues Order Allowing Temporary Border Closure to Migrants” (The New York Times, June 4, 2024).
• Colleen Long, Elliot Spagat, Seung Min Kim, Stephen Groves, “Biden Rolls Out Asylum Restrictions, Months in the Making, to Help ‘Gain Control’ of the Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 5, 2024).
• Michael D. Shear, “To Restrict Migrants, Biden Leans on Trump’s Favorite Immigration Law” (The New York Times, June 4, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, “How Biden’s Asylum Order Works” (The New York Times, June 4, 2024).
• Gabe Gutierrez, Monica Alba, “Biden Signs Executive Action Drastically Tightening Border” (NBC News, June 4, 2024).
• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden’s New Immigration Order Restricts Asylum Claims Along the Border. Here’s How It Works.” (CBS News, June 4, 2024).
• Elliot Spagat, “How Biden’s New Order to Halt Asylum at the Us Border Is Supposed to Work” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 4, 2024).
• Hannah Fry, “Biden Signs Order Tightening Border With Mexico When Crossings Surge” (The Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2024).
• Nicole Narea, “Biden’s Sweeping New Asylum Restrictions, Explained” (Vox, June 4, 2024).
• “Hamed Aleaziz @Haleaziz on Twitter” (Twitter, June 5, 2024).
• “Camilo Montoya-Galvez @Camiloreports on Twitter” (Twitter, June 6, 2024).
• Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg, Ted Hesson, “Explainer: What Does Biden’s New Asylum Ban at the Us-Mexico Border Do?” (Reuters, Reuters, June 5, 2024).
• “How Will Biden’s New Restrictions Affect Asylum Seekers at Us Border?” (Al Jazeera, June 5, 2024).
• Maanvi Singh, “Biden’s Migrant Order Is Recipe for Chaos at Us Border: ‘It Will Only Cause Suffering’” (The Guardian (Uk), June 5, 2024).
• Catherine E. Shoichet, “Three Big Questions About Biden’s New Border Plan” (CNN, June 5, 2024).
• Donald Judd, Priscilla Alvarez, “Biden’s Sweeping Asylum Restrictions Take Effect at Midnight as He Tackles a Key Political Problem” (CNN, June 4, 2024).
• Kaia Hubbard, Lilia Luciano, “Biden Border Action Prompts Concern Among Migrant Advocates: “People Are Going to Have Fewer Options to Access Protection”” (CBS News, June 5, 2024).
• Megan Stringer, Stef W. Kight, “Biden’s New Border Action” (Axios, June 5, 2024).
• Cindy Ramirez, “Biden Issues Executive Order Further Restricting Asylum” (El Paso Matters, June 4, 2024).
• John Washington, “New Federal Asylum Rules and Pima County’s Funding for Aid — What You Need to Know About the Latest Border Developments” (Arizona Luminaria, June 4, 2024).
• Wendy Fry, “What Biden’s Border Order Means for California” (CalMatters, June 4, 2024).

“We intend to challenge this order in court,” the ACLU announced. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council noted that the ACLU “successfully blocked” a similar “2018 Trump asylum ban within days.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), the principal Democratic negotiator on an unsuccessful “border deal” that sought to legislate a similar asylum limit, said “I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own.”

• “Executive Order to Shut Down the Border Would Put Thousands of Lives at Risk” (American Civil Liberties Union, June 4, 2024).
• Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “Biden’s New Changes to the Asylum Process: What You Need to Know” (Immigration Impact, American Immigration Council, June 5, 2024).
• “Andrew Desiderio @Andrewdesiderio on Twitter” (Twitter, June 4, 2024).

A UNHCR statement voiced “profound concern” about the Biden administration’s new rule.

• “Unhcr Expresses Concern Over New Asylum Restrictions in the United States” (UN Refugee Agency, June 4, 2024).

The administration’s announcements did not refer to increased capacity to implement its new barriers to asylum seekers. That would involve costly measures like more asylum officers for expedited removal proceedings, more detention space, or more capacity to deport migrants (more flights, or permission from Mexico to deport more non-Mexican citizens by land). Three DHS officials told the Washington Post that “the administration has not scheduled a short-term increase in deportation flights to ramp up the number of migrants returned to their home countries under the new measures.”

• Maria Sacchetti, Nick Miroff, “Border agents begin turning back migrants under new Biden restrictions” (The Washington Post, June 5, 2024).
• Didi Martinez, Julia Ainsley, Laura Strickler, “Questions Grow About How Biden’s Border Action Will Work Without New Funding” (NBC News, June 5, 2024).
• Philip Bump, “Analysis | What Biden’s new border limits mean in practice” (The Washington Post, June 4, 2024).

The New York Times’s Hamed Aleaziz reported that when asylum seekers in custody try to prove that they meet higher standards of fear of return (called “reasonable probability” of harm), they will have just four hours to find legal representation. “Migrants previously had at least 24 hours or more to find a lawyer.”

• Hamed Aleaziz, “A New Hurdle for Asylum Seekers: 4 Hours to Find a Lawyer” (The New York Times, June 5, 2024).

Reports from the border documented worry and perplexity among migrants. Migrants passing through the northern state of Durango told Milenio that the U.S. policy change did not alter their plans. “We do not have a plan, and we cannot return. This is a low blow,” a 64-year-old man from Colombia told the Guardian in Ciudad Juárez. Some told the Guardian that they are now considering crossing through the dangerous nearby desert. Shelter operators in northern Mexican border cities braced for new strains on their capacity.

• Emiliano Rodriguez Mega, Rocio Gallegos, Simon Romero, “Biden’s New Order Leaves Migrants at Border in Limbo Over Asylum Fate” (The New York Times, June 5, 2024).
• Elliot Spagat, Valerie Gonzalez, “Migrants Are Rattled and Unsure as Deportations Begin Under New Rule Halting Asylum” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 6, 2024).
• Amanda Ulrich, Lorena Figueroa, “Asylum Seekers at the Us-Mexico Border Worry About Their Next Move: ‘We Cannot Return’” (The Guardian (Uk), June 5, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “Executive Order Takes Migrants by Surprise” (Border Report, June 4, 2024).
• Andrea Castillo, “Tired and Confused, First Migrants Reach California Border After Biden’s Asylum Order” (The Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2024).
• Alexandra Mendoza, Kristina Davis, “Anxiety and Uncertainty Set in at San Diego-Tijuana Border Before Rollout of Biden’s Immigration Order” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, June 4, 2024).
• Daniel Trotta, “New Reality for Migrants at U.S.-Mexico Border as Biden Asylum Ban Takes Effect” (Reuters, Reuters, June 5, 2024).
• Sandra Gomez, “Biden No Podra Detener Sueno Americano, Acusan Migrantes en Durango” (Milenio (Mexico), June 5, 2024).

Coverage of the new rule’s political and electoral implications found progressive Democrats outraged by the rollback of asylum rights; most Republicans claiming it is “too little, too late” and doesn’t do enough to stop migrants from arriving; and centrist Democrats—especially those from tightly contested states or districts—supporting it.

• Michael Gold, Reid J. Epstein, “Fingers Point as Biden Closes Border to Asylum Seekers” (The New York Times, June 4, 2024).
• Adriana Gomez Licon, Jill Colvin, Stephen Groves, “Will Biden’s New Border Measures Be Enough to Change Voters’ Minds?” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 5, 2024).
• Leigh Ann Caldwell, Theodoric Meyer, “Democrats Frustrated With Biden Border Order” (The Washington Post, June 4, 2024).
• Aaron Blake, “Biden’s Risky Asylum Crackdown Gambit” (The Washington Post, June 4, 2024).
• Jennifer Haberkorn, Myah Ward, “Biden and Allies Move Swiftly to Sell the Public on His New Border Order” (Politico, June 4, 2024).
• Hans Nichols, Stef W. Kight, “How Politics, Timing Shaped Biden’s Border Gambit” (Axios, June 4, 2024).
• Rafael Carranza, “Why Biden’s Action on Border Security Is Getting Panned on the Right and Left in Arizona” (The Arizona Republic, June 4, 2024).
• Elizabeth Findell, Natalie Andrews, “Border Lawmaker’s Migrant Encounter Underscores 2024 Stakes” (The Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2024).
• Chris Stein, Gloria Oladipo, “Democrats Decry Biden Executive Order Turning Away Some Asylum Seekers” (The Guardian (Uk), June 4, 2024).
• Renee Schmiedeberg, “San Diego Leaders Respond to Biden’s Order That Could Close Border to Asylum Seekers Amid Surges” (City News Service, NBC San Diego, June 5, 2024).
• Nick Niedzwiadek, “Biden Border Crackdown Could Snip Economy” (Politico, June 4, 2024).
• Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-New York), “Cbc Immigration Task Force Statement on President Biden’s Executive Actions on Asylum” (U.S. House of Representatives, June 5, 2024).
• Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Washington), “Gluesenkamp Perez, Golden, Peltola, Davis on Biden’s Overdue Action on Border Security” (U.S. House of Representatives, June 4, 2024).
• Natasha Lennard, “Joe Biden’s Cruel Border Shutdown Follows in Clinton and Obama’s Footsteps Too” (The Intercept, June 5, 2024).

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters that, in a June 4 conversation with President Biden, he encouraged Biden to deport non-Mexican migrants directly, not into Mexico: “Why do they come to Mexico? We have no problem, we treat migrants very well, all of them, but why triangulate?” (Mexico accepts up to a combined 30,000 U.S. deportations per month of citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.)

• Pedro Dominguez, “Amlo Negocia Repatriacion Directa Con Eu; Sin Pasar por Mexico” (Milenio (Mexico), June 5, 2024).

Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens tweeted that the agency has documented more than 300 deaths of migrants on U.S. soil since the fiscal year began in October, with the hot summer months just beginning.

• “Chief Jason Owens @Usbpchief on Twitter” (Twitter, June 4, 2024).

Mexican migration agents and National Guard personnel carried out a June 5 operation to evict migrants from a plaza near the Mexico City headquarters of the country’s refugee agency, COMAR.

• Sara Pantoja, “Denuncian Desalojo de Migrantes de la Plaza Giordano Bruno” (Proceso (Mexico), June 5, 2024).

The Panamanian government’s human rights ombudsman filed a criminal complaint about more than 400 alleged cases of sexual violence perpetrated against migrants in the Darién Gap region. Before Panama’s Health Ministry suspended its permission to operate in March, Doctors Without Borders had been documenting these cases.

• “Defensor del Pueblo de Panama Presenta Denuncia por Violaciones a Migrantes en el Darien” (EFE, Yahoo!, June 4, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Washington Post reported on the Texas state government’s intense campaign to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House migrant shelter.

• Arelis R. Hernandez, “This Catholic Leader Shelters Migrants. Texas Says He Runs ‘Stash Houses.’” (The Washington Post, June 6, 2024).

“Though there’s little to be done now about this recycled immigration policy” at the border, President Biden “could use his executive power to shield immigrants from deportation and allow them to work legally,” argued Andrea Flores of Fwd.us in a New York Times column.

• Andrea R. Flores, “To Win on Immigration, Biden Must Move the Debate Beyond the Border” (fwd.us, The New York Times, June 5, 2024).

A feature at the Guardian told the stories of five asylum seekers’ difficult and even traumatic passage through the U.S. asylum system.

• Sam Levin, “What the Us Asylum Process Is Really Like, in Applicants’ Own Words: ‘I’ve Waited 10 Years’” (The Guardian (Uk), June 4, 2024).

The New York Times reported on how the San Diego region has been impacted by a notable increase in migration over the past several months.

• Jonathan Wolfe, “San Diego Is Once Again a Top Migrant Entry Point” (The New York Times, June 4, 2024).

An Inter-American Dialogue slide presentation cited “1145 charter flights of at least 150 passengers en route to the Mexico-US border” landing in Managua, Nicaragua between July 2023 and January 2024.

• “A Foreign Policy Problem: Ten Facts About Migration to the US” (Inter-American Dialogue, June 5, 2024).
• “Informe Revela Que Dictadura Recibio 1,145 Vuelos Charter Cargados de Migrantes, Entre Julio de 2023 y Enero de 2024” (Nicaragua Investiga, June 5, 2024).

The Catholic Charities humanitarian migrant respite center in McAllen, which receives people released from CBP custody, commemorated ten years of operations. Headed by Sister Norma Pimentel, the well-known shelter was a response to the first major arrival of child and family asylum seekers, which at the time was mostly Central American citizens arriving largely in south Texas.

• Francisco E. Jimenez, “Humanitarian Respite Center in Mcallen Celebrates Ten Years of Service” (The Brownsville Herald, June 4, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Later today, President Biden will sign a sweeping proclamation shutting down the right to seek asylum for migrants apprehended on U.S. soil between the U.S.-Mexico border’s ports of entry. Several border-region mayors, mainly from Texas, will be on hand, along with some centrist Democratic legislators. The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice will issue an interim final rule laying out how they will implement the “asylum shutdown.”

According to several media reports, the “asylum shutdown” would be triggered when Border Patrol’s daily migrant encounters exceed 2,500 per day, as they have in every month since February 2021. The right to asylum between ports of entry would not be restored until migrant apprehensions drop below a daily average of 1,500 per day, which has not happened since July 2020.

Of the 296 months since fiscal 2020, the daily average has exceeded 2,500 in 110 of them: 37 percent of the time. During those 110 months, had the executive order been in place, it would have triggered an asylum shutdown. The daily average has dropped below 1,500 just 42 percent of the time (124 months), which would have made restoring asylum difficult had the executive order been in place.

Unless there is a radical change in migration patterns at the border, then, this is an effective ban on asylum between ports of entry. The Trump administration sought to implement a similar “asylum ban” 2019—making it absolute, without the numerical thresholds—but courts threw it out because it violated Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which guarantees due process for people asking for asylum on U.S. soil.

Other likely elements of the executive order, according to secondary reports:

• Its legal justification will be Section 212(f) of the INA, which allows the President to prohibit the entry of entire classes of non-citizens considered “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It is doubtful, however, that 212(f) applies to people who have already arrived on U.S. soil and are requesting protection. “ A reliance on 212(f) that prevents access to asylum arguably directly conflicts with the INA,” reads a new policy brief from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.
• It will not apply to unaccompanied minors or victims of “severe” trafficking.
• It will not apply to people who have made appointments at border ports of entry using the CBP One app. We have heard nothing about any possible changes to the number of appointments that this app will make available; the current cap is 1,450 per day.
• People will be screened for fear of return only if they specifically manifest such fear to U.S. authorities.
• Unlike Title 42 expulsions, those who are removed under this new arrangement will be penalized, probably by being barred for several years from reentering the United States.

Elements that are not clear include:

• What would happen if the number of apprehended migrants exceeds border authorities’ ability to deport them, detain them, or screen them for the executive order’s likely elevated criteria for fear of harm. All of these require resources. During the “Title 42” era, thousands per day were released into the U.S. interior because authorities could not detain or remove them.
• What the Mexican government’s cooperation with deportations of rejected asylum seekers might look like.

• “Policy Brief: Presidential Authority to Block or Expel Migrants” (American Immigration Lawyers Association, June 3, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Biden Is Expected to Sign Order Letting Him Seal Border With Mexico” (The New York Times, June 3, 2024).
• Julia Ainsley, Julie Tsirkin, Monica Alba, “Biden Is Expected to Sign an Executive Action Tuesday That Would Temporarily Shut the Border When Numbers Surge” (NBC News, June 3, 2024).
• Colleen Long, Seung Min Kim, Stephen Groves, “Biden Prepares an Order That Would Shut Down Asylum if a Daily Average of 2,500 Migrants Arrive” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 3, 2024).
• Nick Miroff, Toluse Olorunnipa, “Biden Expected to Announce New Asylum Restrictions at Border” (The Washington Post, June 3, 2024).
• Michelle Hackman, Tarini Parti, “Biden to Issue Executive Order on Southern Border, Limiting Asylum” (The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2024).
• Jennifer Haberkorn, Myah Ward, “Border Mayors, Democratic Allies to Join Biden as He Announces Asylum Limits” (Politico, June 3, 2024).
• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden Executive Order Restricting Asylum Processing Along U.S. Border Expected on Tuesday” (CBS News, June 3, 2024).
• Steve Holland, Ted Hesson, “Biden Expected to Block Migrants From Asylum at Us-Mexico Border” (Reuters, Reuters, June 4, 2024).
• Hans Nichols, Stef W. Kight, “How Politics, Timing Shaped Biden’s Border Gambit” (Axios, June 4, 2024).
• “Biden Set to Unveil Order Restricting Asylum at Us-Mexico Border” (Al Jazeera, June 3, 2024).
• Rafael Carranza, “Az Border Mayors Shun Biden’s Invite to Unveil Executive Order Curbing Asylum” (The Arizona Republic, June 3, 2024).
• Robert Moore, “Oscar Leeser Will Join President Biden for Tuesday Announcement on New Asylum Limits” (El Paso Matters, June 3, 2024).

Democratic legislators who defend migrants’ rights are upset, the Washington Post reported. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients that the measure is “very, very disappointing.”

• Leigh Ann Caldwell, Theodoric Meyer, “Democrats Frustrated With Biden Border Order” (The Washington Post, June 4, 2024).

The Republican-majority House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee met this morning to “mark up” (amend and approve) its draft of the chamber’s 2025 budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The draft bill, which reflects Republican priorities, has virtually zero chance of passage before the November election.

It includes mandatory spending on border wall construction. It provides funding for a total of 22,000 Border Patrol agents, nearly 3,000 more than the present workforce. It would eliminate funding for the Case Management alternatives-to-detention pilot program, the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Family Reunification Task Force, and the Shelter Services Program. It would prohibit use of the CBP One app “to facilitate the entry of aliens into the country.” It would increase ICE’s detention bed capacity to 50,000, up from the currently funded level of 41,500.

• “Committee Releases fy25 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill” (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, June 3, 2024).

Amid increasing pre-summer heat, CBP reported four deaths of migrants in its El Paso Sector (Texas-New Mexico) over the weekend.

• “Weekend Deaths Highlight Dangers of Crossing Border” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, June 3, 2024).

Arizona’s Republican-majority legislature is close to approving a law similar to Texas’s controversial S.B. 4, which makes it a state crime to cross the border improperly. Rather than go to Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who would veto it, the law would become a ballot measure when Arizonans vote in November. S.B. 4, which would let Texas enforce its own immigration policy and incentivizes racial profiling, remains suspended as litigation continues.

• “Arizona Proposal to Let Local Police Make Border-Crossing Arrests Is Set for Lawmakers’ Final Vote” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 4, 2024).

The police chief of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico—a border city just south of Yuma, Arizona—was assassinated in a broad-daylight ambush in the middle of the city yesterday.

• “Acribillan a Titular de la Policia de Slrc y su Escolta, Confirma Fgje Sonora” (Proyecto Puente (Mexico), June 3, 2024).

A Border Patrol agent in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley was arrested on charges of helping migrants cross into the United States in exchange for bribes.

• Jason Hopkins, “Border Patrol Agent Arrested Over Alleged Scheme to Smuggle Migrants Over Southern Border” (Daily Caller, June 3, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Following a U.S. Government Accountability Office report about Border Patrol agents’ confiscation of migrants’ belongings and documents while in custody, Cronkite News talked to advocates and service providers in Arizona who are documenting the problem and filing complaints.

• Benjamin Adelberg, “Immigrants Report Missing Personal Items by Border Patrol” (Cronkite News, June 3, 2024).

The New York Times looked at recent poll data showing reduced support for immigration within U.S. public opinion.

• Jazmine Ulloa, “Trump’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate, Polls Show” (The New York Times, June 3, 2024).

On the Right

• Adam Shaw, Lucas Y. Tomlinson, “‘Too Little, Too Late’: Why Biden’s Border Plan Doesn’t Impress Critics” (Fox News, June 3, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, Victor Nava, “Republicans Slam Biden Border Crackdown Order as ‘Political Stunt,’ as Dem Texas Mayor Says It’s Months Too Late” (The New York Post, June 3, 2024).
• Ingrid Jacques, “Biden Finally Acts on Border Crisis, Showing He Could’ve Done Something About It All Along” (USA Today, June 3, 2024).
• Steven Nelson, “How Explosive Showdown Between New Biden Campaign Manager and Eric Adams Tanked Mayor’s Relationship With Prez” (The New York Post, June 3, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

President Biden is expected to issue an executive order tomorrow (Tuesday June 4) at least partially “shutting down” the right to ask for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. It is likely to enable U.S. border authorities to channel asylum seekers into rapid removal from the United States, at times when daily migrant arrivals exceed a certain threshold, probably 4,000 or 5,000 people per day. At busy moments along the border, the executive order could institute a policy similar to the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions regime.

The administration is expected to claim that the new “shutdown” authority’s legal underpinning is Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which allows the President to bar the entry of entire classes of non-citizens considered “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” However, courts have cast doubt on whether 212(f) can in fact be used to remove an asylum seeker already on U.S. soil and asking for protection, who are protected by Section 208 of the INA.

It appears that the “shutdown” would only apply to asylum seekers apprehended between the land border ports of entry. Those with appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app would still be processed.

The move comes just after Sunday’s presidential election in Mexico, whose government will be expected to cooperate in receiving at least some of the migrants refused asylum access and sent back across the land border. Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City and the candidate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA party, won in a landslide.

At least two Texas border-city mayors are expected to be on hand in Washington for tomorrow’s executive order announcement.

• Myah Ward, “Biden Executive Action on the Border Could Come as Early as Tuesday” (Politico, June 2, 2024).
• Camila Dechalus, Kayla Tausche, Priscilla Alvarez, “Biden Administration Preparing to Announce Border Executive Action as Early as Tuesday” (CNN, June 1, 2024).
• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden Executive Order Restricting Asylum Processing Along U.S. Border Expected on Tuesday” (CBS News, June 3, 2024).
• Valerie Gonzalez, “Border Mayors Heading to Dc for Tuesday’s Immigration Announcement” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 2, 2024).
• Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), “Rosen Urges President Biden to Finally Take Executive Action to Secure the Border, Ensure Orderly & Humane Asylum Process” (U.S. Senate, May 31, 2024).

CBS News and Fox News reported that Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border apprehended about 118,000 migrants during May 2024, which would make May the third-lightest month for border migrant arrivals of the Biden administration’s 40 full months in office. This continues a trend of reduced migration, dating from January, that appears to owe a lot to the Mexican government’s migrant interdiction operations.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden Executive Order Restricting Asylum Processing Along U.S. Border Expected on Tuesday” (CBS News, June 3, 2024).
• “Bill Melugin @billmelugin_ on Twitter” (Twitter, June 1, 2024).

ICE removed migrants to their countries of origin on 151 flights in May, the most in a month since August 2023 (153), according to the latest “ICE Air Flights” report by Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. This added up to 6.6 deportation flights per weekday, “just over the prior 6-month average of 6.4.” 90 percent of those flights went to Guatemala (47), Honduras (29), Mexico (18), Ecuador (17), El Salvador (13), or Colombia (12). For its part, Mexico carried out nine deportation flights: five to Honduras, three to Guatemala, and one to Colombia.

• Thomas H. Cartwright, “Ice Air Flights 6/2/24” (Witness at the Border, June 2, 2024).

“The United States is in talks with Venezuelan authorities to resume direct repatriation flights” to Caracas, noted the Venezuelan opposition-aligned daily Tal Cual.

• Luna Perdomo, “Mexico Trabaja para Retomar Vuelos de Repatriacion de Venezolanos Expulsados Desde Eeuu” (Tal Cual (Venezuela), June 2, 2024).

For the second straight week, the chief of Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona sector reported more migrant apprehensions than did the chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego, California sector. Tucson had been the border’s number-one migration destination, measured by apprehensions, between July and March, but was outpaced by San Diego in April. A Fox News correspondent cited preliminary Border Patrol data indicating that Tucson apprehensions exceeded those of San Diego in May by a margin of 33,000 to 32,000.

• “John R. Modlin @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter” (Twitter, May 31, 2024).
• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter” (Twitter, May 29, 2024).

Corrupt Mexican migration (INM) agents operating a checkpoint at the Tijuana airport have been using it to extort money from migrants passing through, and this has happened “for years,” municipal migration official Enrique Lucero told Border Report.

• Salvador Rivera, “Immigration Checkpoint at Tijuana Airport Used to Extort Newcomers, Official Says” (Border Report, May 31, 2024).

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced the completion of construction at a state government military base near Eagle Pass. 300 Texas National Guard soldiers are now quartered there, a number that will rise to 1,800.

• “Governor Abbott Welcomes Texas National Guard to New Forward Operating Base in Eagle Pass” (Texas Governor’s Office, May 31, 2024).
• Rose L. Thayer, “Texas National Guard Troops Move Into New Base on Mexico Border” (Stars and Stripes, May 31, 2024).

Abbott also reported that since April 2022, Texas has bused over 117,900 released migrants to the Democratic Party-governed cities of Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles, without first coordinating with or informing those cities’ municipal officials.

• “Texas Establishes Permanent Presence on the Southern Border” (Texas Governor’s Office, May 31, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The New York Times detailed an election-year spike in threats and infiltration attempts suffered by humanitarian organizations, like shelters, assisting migrants on the U.S. side of the border. It identifies James O’Keefe of the provocateur organization Judicial Watch as a ringleader of the campaign against border charities.

• Miriam Jordan, “Faith-Based Groups That Assist Migrants Become Targets of Extremists” (The New York Times, June 2, 2024).

In 2023, only 56 percent of unaccompanied migrant children defending their cases in U.S immigration court had attorneys representing them, ABC News noted. The immigration court system does not guarantee a right to counsel, even for parentless children, so “minors are left to navigate the different avenues of relief alone, fill out documents in a foreign language, and argue their case before a judge.”

• Laura Romero, “Unaccompanied Minors Are Representing Themselves in Immigration Court, Alarming Advocates” (ABC News, June 3, 2024).

At the New Yorker, Stephania Taladrid profiled Mexico’s foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, who has sought to defend Mexico’s interests and to push for more action on migration’s “root causes” amid U.S. pressure to crack down on migration transiting Mexico. That pressure has intensified this year, the article notes, as perceptions of border security and migration could determine some voters’ decisions in a tight U.S. election. An unnamed Mexican official described the Biden administration’s approach to migration policy as “schizophrenic.”

• Stephania Taladrid, “Will Mexico Decide the U.S. Election?” (The New Yorker, June 1, 2024).

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wilson Center analysts Alan Bersin and Diego Marroquin Bitar predicted that Mexico’s approach to the border and migration will change little with the June 2 electoral victory of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s chosen candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum.

• Alan Bersin, Diego Marroquin Bitar, “Mexico’s Monumental Election Isn’t Expected to Bring Big Changes at the U.S.-Mexico Border” (Wilson Center, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 31, 2024).

The Nicaraguan opposition-aligned investigative media outlet Onda Local identified some of the officials directing a thriving human smuggling route through Nicaragua, which does not require visas for most visiting nationalities. It alleges that the director of Air Transportation of Nicaragua’s Civil Aeronautics Institute, Róger Martínez Canales, “has the task of collecting the ‘fee’…from the money generated by human trafficking, which amounts to several million dollars, since for each migrant a sum of between $5,000 and $10,000 is charged then distributed among those involved, the airlines and international companies indirectly involved in the business.”

• “Revelan Pistas Sobre Quienes Manejan el Trafico de Migrantes en Nicaragua” (Onda Local (Nicaragua), May 31, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Reports that the White House may launch an executive order to limit asylum access at the border are converging on Tuesday (June 4) as a likely date for an announcement. The measure would enable U.S. border authorities to “shut down” access to asylum seekers, instead channeling them into rapid removal from the United States, at times when daily migrant arrivals exceed a certain threshold, probably 4,000 or 5,000 people per day.

At busy moments along the border, then, the executive order would institute a policy similar to the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions regime.

The Biden administration appears to be relying on a provision in U.S. law (Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act) that allows the president to ban arrivals of entire classes of migrants. Any order will face legal challenges, and courts may rule that Section 212(f) does not apply once a migrant has already arrived on U.S. soil and is requesting protection under U.S. asylum law.

“The talks were still fluid and the people stressed that no final decisions had been made” about the executive order, the Associated Press cautioned.

• Colleen Long, Seung Min Kim, “Biden Is Said to Be Finalizing Plans for Migrant Limits as Part of a Us-Mexico Border Clampdown” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 30, 2024).
• Ellen M. Gilmer, Josh Wingrove, “Biden Is Readying New Order to Tighten Asylum Process at Border” (Bloomberg, Yahoo!, May 30, 2024).
• Jordan King, “Will Joe Biden Close Us Border? What We Know” (Newsweek, May 30, 2024).

Texas security forces, principally National Guard soldiers, have begun firing non-lethal ammunition at migrants—mainly pepper irritant projectiles but perhaps also rubber bullets—on what seems to be a routine basis along the Rio Grande between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. The Texas personnel are discharging these weapons even though the migrants are usually on the other side of fencing and concertina wire, and thus pose no imminent threat. Those claiming to have been in the line of fire include families and journalists.

Migrants in Ciudad Juárez told EFE that the Texas personnel fire at them even “while they sleep.” They displayed bruises and un-ruptured projectiles. “In addition to aggressions with weapons, said migrants on the river, are constant verbal aggressions and the use of laser beams to damage the eyes,” the report added.

• “Migrantes Acusan a la Guardia de Texas de Dispararles Mientras Duermen en Mexico” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), May 30, 2024).

As May draws to a close, “the El Paso, Texas-Juarez, Mexico area recorded a maximum temperature of 96 degrees on Thursday,” Border Report reported. “Juarez city officials say several migrants in the past two weeks have come down with heat-related illnesses, including dehydration.” Most of the city’s migrant shelters, which are about 60 percent full right now, force single adults to spend daylight hours off their premises.

• Julian Resendiz, “Migrants on Juarez Streets Coping With High Temperatures” (Border Report, May 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The University of Texas’s Strauss Center released the latest in a long series of reports about asylum processing at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. “In May 2024, the ports of entry in Tijuana and Matamoros each had nearly 400 daily CBP One appointments, constituting 52 percent of all available slots,” while all official border crossings border-wide allowed about 100 “walk-ups” per day.

The report discusses some of the difficulty that asylum seekers are experiencing in reaching the U.S.-Mexico border due to Mexico’s 2024 crackdown on migration. Mexico’s Migration Policy Unit released data this week showing that authorities had stopped or encountered 481,025 migrants between January and April, 231 percent more than during the same period in 2023.

• Caitlyn Yates, Stephanie Leutert, “Asylum Processing at the U.S.-Mexico Border: May 2024” (University of Texas Strauss Center, May 30, 2024).

The International Refugee Assistance Project published a second update with information about the State Department-coordinated “Safe Mobility Office” (SMO) program. As of mid-May 2024, about 190,000 people had registered for appointments to seek legal migration pathways at SMOs, managed with UNHCR and IOM, in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala. The majority of SMO registrants—at least 110,000—were Venezuelans in Colombia. Over 21,000 registrants at all offices have been approved for resettlement under the State Department-run Refugee Admissions Program.

• Second Backgrounder on the Biden Administration’s Safe Mobility Initiative May 28, 2024 (International Refugee Assistance Project, Tuesday, May 28, 2024).

The SMOs already refer a few registrants to legal migration pathways in Spain and soon Canada. CBS News reported that the offices may soon channel some Latin American migrants to Greece and Italy.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “U.S. Planning to Refer Some Migrants for Resettlement in Greece and Italy Under Biden Initiative” (CBS News, May 30, 2024).

Telling the story of a Northeast Cartel hitman killing carried out in Zapata, Texas, a feature from USA Today’s Rick Jervis illustrated the difficulty of carrying out cross-border organized crime investigations. Political disagreements about “Operation Lone Star,” Jervis noted, has worsened law enforcement cooperation between Mexico and the state of Texas.

• Rick Jervis, “In Hunt for Cartel Hitmen, Texas Ranger’s Biggest Obstacle May Be the Border Itself” (USA Today, May 31, 2024).

Between January 1 and April 16, Guatemala has expelled over 7,500 migrants into Honduras, UNHCR reported. “77% were Venezuelans, 9% Colombians and 6% Ecuadorians.” Meanwhile, funding cutbacks have drastically reduced, “from over eight to three,” the number of humanitarian organizations offering assistance in Agua Caliente, the Honduran border town where most Guatemalan expulsions take place.

• “Honduras – Operational Update – April 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, May 30, 2024).

At Public Books, S. Deborah Kang examined the historical and current challenges that asylum seekers face in Border Patrol custody, from many agents’ predisposition against asylum to the expansion of Expedited Removal.

• S. Deborah Kang, “The Border Patrol and Asylum Exclusion” (Public Books, May 30, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Three San Diego-area House Democrats, along with Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro, sent a letter to leadership of DHS and CBP with questions about oversight of Border Patrol in human rights cases. Castro and Reps. Juan Vargas, Sara Jacobs, and Scott Peters called on the border agencies to follow recommendations in a May 13 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which found that Border Patrol’s Office of Professional Responsibility needed to improve the independence and impartiality of personnel investigating critical use-of-force incidents. The Southern Border Communities Coalition had raised the issue at a May 28 event in San Diego.

• Alex Riggins, “San Diego Congress Members Seek More Answers About Border Patrol Units That Operated Without Oversight” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 29, 2024).

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) visited the border in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, and New Mexico. The centrist member of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned, “The threat of terrorism associated with unlawful entry to the United States is real.”

• Adam Van Brimmer, Greg Bluestein, Patricia Murphy, Tia Mitchell, “Ossoff Becomes Rare Democrat to Visit Us-Mexico Border” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 30, 2024).

Upon searching a mobile phone at a vehicle stop of a car smuggling migrants in Arizona, Border Patrol agents claim to have discovered a Telegram group chat involving 1,000 people sharing information about plans to pick up and transport undocumented people.

• Julian Resendiz, “Agents Search Woman’s Phone, Find Telegram Chat Used by 1,000 Smugglers” (Border Report, May 29, 2024).

About a quarter of people in Venezuela are considering migrating, but of those, 47 percent would stay if the opposition were somehow allowed to win the country’s July 28 presidential elections, according to a Delphos poll reported by the Associated Press.

• Regina Garcia Cano, “As Maduro Shifts From Migration Denier to Defender, Venezuelans Consider Leaving if He Is Reelected” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

In a Time excerpt from a new book about immigration, Stanford University Professor Ana Raquel Minian provided a rapid overview of the history of U.S. detention of apprehended migrants. It concluded: “Rather than caging migrants and refugees, the government should simply release them and allow them to reside with friends, family, or community members in the U.S. while it examines their cases.”

• Ana Raquel Minian, “America Turned Against Migrant Detention Before” (Stanford University, Time, May 30, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Texas National Guard personnel fired at least one pepper irritant projectile on migrants at the Rio Grande in El Paso on Tuesday. The migrants, who included families with children, were separated from the soldiers by a mass of fencing and concertina wire and posed no apparent threat of death or injury, calling into question Texas’s use-of-force guidelines. Texas’s Department of Public Safety has not commented on the incident, caught on video from the Ciudad Juárez side.

“An unidentified Venezuelan man said two pepper balls struck him in the neck and side after he crossed the Rio Grande to plead with the soldiers to let families come across the razor wire,” Border Report reported. A Venezuelan mother and father told a videographer that they had “placed a piece of cardboard between two shrubs on the Mexican side of the river to protect their 1-year-old daughter from stray shots.” A photographer said that a guardsman shot at him twice while he filmed from the Mexican side.

• Julian Resendiz, “Asylum-Seeking Families Take Cover After Texas National Guard Fires Pepper Balls” (Border Report, May 28, 2024).
• Nick Mordowanec, “Migrants Run for Cover as Texas National Guard Shoots at Them” (Newsweek, May 29, 2024).

“The reality is that some people do indeed try to game the [asylum] system,” the Biden administration’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, told CBS News. “That does not speak to everyone whom we encounter, but there is an element of it, and we deal with it accordingly.”

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Mayorkas Says Some Migrants “Try to Game” the U.S. Asylum System” (CBS News, May 28, 2024).
• Adam Shaw, “Mayorkas Says Some Migrants ‘Try to Game’ Asylum System, as Border Crisis Remains Top Political Issue” (Fox News, May 28, 2024).

“The White House and a White House official told me that no final decisions have been made about an executive action that is potentially being considered” to shut down migrants’ access to asylum at the border at times of heavy migration, reported PBS NewsHour’s Laura Barron-Lopez. “But sources told me that this specific executive action could come as early as next week after the Mexican elections on June 2.”

• Ian Couzens, Laura Barron-Lopez, Shrai Popat, “Biden Considers Temporarily Closing Southern Border to Curb Flow of Migrant Crossings” (Newshour, PBS, May 28, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Upon this week’s 100th anniversary of the founding of Border Patrol, the agency’s chief, Jason Owens, looked back on his career and told CBP’s Frontline magazine website that people considering a career in the force should fully commit to it as a “calling.” Owens described tools using AI technology as a “force multiplier” for agents in the field. “It would be so much better if the migrants went to the port of entry,” Owens added. (CBP has capped port of entry capacity to receive asylum seekers at 1,450 people per day border-wide.)

• Kathleen Franklin, “A Frontline Interview With Chief Jason Owens on the U.S. Border Patrol’s 100th Anniversary” (Frontline, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, May 28, 2024).

The Southern Border Communities Coalition commemorated the anniversary with a press conference in San Diego with loved ones of people killed, wounded, or racially profiled by agency personnel, none of whom has been penalized.

• “Border Communities to President Biden: ‘Fight for Our Dignity’ & End 100 Years of Border Patrol Violence” (Southern Border Communities Coalition, May 28, 2024).
• Sarah Lapidus, “Families Demand Justice for Loved Ones Killed by the Border Patrol as Agency Turns 100” (The Arizona Republic, May 29, 2024).

“Revelations of some agents’ racist vitriol toward migrants, along with allegations of sexual misconduct against women employees, have rocked public trust in recent years,” noted a Christian Science Monitor analysis of Border Patrol’s centennial.

• Caitlin Babcock, Sarah Matusek, “How the Border Patrol Has Evolved Over 100 Years From Horses to AI” (The Christian Science Monitor, May 28, 2024).

The International Displacement Monitoring Center “recorded over 6.3 million total IDPs [internally displaced persons] in the Americas at the end of 2023, marking a 6% decrease from the end of 2022 but remaining on par with 2021’s figure of 6.2 million,” notes a summary of IDMP’s mid-May annual report at Jordi Amaral’s Americas Migration Brief. Conflict and violence displaced over 600,000 people in 2023.

• “The Silent Struggle of Internal Displacement” (Americas Migration Brief, May 29, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector (7,400) saw more migrant apprehensions than its San Diego Sector (6,157) last week, according to tweets from the sector chiefs. For a period of eight weeks, San Diego had measured the most migration of all nine of Border Patrol’s U.S.-Mexico border sectors, for the first time since the late 1990s. But San Diego was eclipsed, at least for last week, after experiencing a 39 percent drop in migration over 3 weeks.

• “John R. Modlin @Usbpchieftca on Twitter” (Twitter, May 24, 2024).
• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. Mcgurk-Daniel @Usbpchiefsdc on Twitter” (Twitter, May 22, 2024).

If Joe Biden “were to try to shut down portions of the border, the courts would throw that out, I think, within a matter of weeks,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told CBS News’s Face the Nation. Murphy was Senate Democrats’ chief architect of unsuccessful border legislation that would have, among other provisions, shut down asylum access when migrant encounters exceeded a certain level at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Ted Hesson, “Biden Has ‘Limited Ability’ to Step Up Border Security, Democratic Senator Says” (Reuters, Reuters, May 26, 2024).
• Miranda Nazzaro, “Lawmakers Urge Congress to Take Action on Southern Border to Keep Migrant Decline” (The Hill, May 26, 2024).

A CNN analysis noted how Democratic legislators and candidates in tight races are most likely to favor placing limits on access to asylum at the border.

• Em Steck, “Democrats in Tight Races Support Border Bill Despite Past Opposition to Stricter Asylum Rules and Border Wall Money” (CNN, May 24, 2024).

“Last week U.S. authorities expelled 200 migrants who crossed through Gate 40 of the border fence [in El Paso] and handed them over to the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez, where they were warned that they would be returned to Chiapas, a state on Mexico’s southern border,” EFE reported. Still, the article noted, Venezuelan migrants stranded in Ciudad Juárez are not giving up.

• “Migrantes Insisten en Cruzar a ee.uu. Por el Rio Bravo Pese Crecientes Deportaciones” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), May 28, 2024).

EFE also reported that fentanyl addiction is increasing in Ciudad Juárez, and some migrants in the Mexican border city are falling prey to it.

• “Fentanilo Engancha a Poblacion Migrante en Ciudad Juarez” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), May 27, 2024).

Throughout the Mexican northern-border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez is the largest city, migrants are being caught up in a worsening wave of ransom kidnappings carried out by organized crime, France24 reported.

• “Frontera Mexico-Eu: Alarma Entre los Migrantes por una Oleada de Secuestros” (France24, Proceso (Mexico), May 25, 2024).

“We’re gonna be barricading every area where people are crossing—until we get every area to have like this area is right now,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told CBS News’s 60 Minutes; “this area” was the heavily fortified Shelby Park in Eagle Pass. (Texas’s border with Mexico is about 1,200 miles long.)

In the same segment, Raúl Ortiz, who headed Border Patrol between 2021 and 2023, criticized Abbott for not cooperating with Border Patrol, but also voiced dissatisfaction with the Biden administration: “I’ve never had one conversation with the president. Or the vice president, for that matter.”

• Cecilia Vega, “Texas and Federal Government Clash Over How to Deter Illegal Border Crossings” (CBS News, May 26, 2024).

Former Border Patrol agent Hector Hernandez was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison for taking bribes to smuggle methamphetamine and migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. Hernandez had been employed by Border Patrol in San Diego.

• Debbie L. Sklar, “Ex-Border Patrol Agent Sentenced Over 7 Years for Accepting Bribes, Smuggling” (Times of San Diego, May 24, 2024).
• Amber Coakley, “Former US Border Patrol agent sentenced for bribery, drug distribution” (Border Report, May 25, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A Mother Jones analysis of the U.S. Border Patrol at its 100th anniversary highlighted aspects of the agency’s founding, at the urging of Texas Congressman Claude Benton Hudspeth, that reflect political and social tensions and contradictions about U.S. border security and immigration that remain in place today. “Chaos is not just the absence of a border; it is also the consequence of trying to maintain one,” Murphy wrote.

• Tim Murphy, “The Border Patrol Is an Engine of Crisis—and Has Been Since the Beginning” (Mother Jones, May 28, 2024).

Of 128 migrants transiting Panama interviewed by UNHCR earlier this month, 69 percent were from Venezuela, and of these, half came directly from Venezuela. Of the half of Venezuelans who had sought to live elsewhere before migrating northward, 60 percent had applied for legal status in those other countries, mainly Colombia, Peru, or Ecuador.

Of all 128, 69 percent reported suffering physical insecurity (attacks, drownings, or falls) while crossing the Darién. 22 percent observed between 1 and 20 cadavers along the trail.

• “Darien Panama: Mixed Movements Protection Monitoring May 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, May 27, 2024).

Colombia “would not agree with” Panamanian President-Elect José Raúl Mulino’s campaign promise to shut down the Darién Gap by deporting migrants who cross the treacherous route, said Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo. Instead, “what we have to offer is more humanitarian outlets for this population that crosses through that area.”

The Colombian news site Cambio looked at the logistical, human rights, and practical obstacles that would stand in the way of “shutting down” the Darién.

• “Colombia “No Estaria de Acuerdo” Con Cierre de Ruta Migratoria del Darien: Canciller Murillo” (Agence France Presse, RCN (Colombia), May 25, 2024).
• “Tapon del Darien: ¿Colombia Esta Lista para el Cierre Anunciado por el Presidente Electo de Panama?” (Cambio (Colombia), May 28, 2024).

The Ecuadorian daily Primicias reported on the increasing number of northbound Ecuadorian citizens who are avoiding the Darién Gap by flying to El Salvador, which does not require visas of visiting Ecuadorians. “Between January and April 2024, 43,408 travelers have left Ecuador [for El Salvador] and 4,112 have returned.” Some are subject to bribery shakedowns and mistreatment by Salvadoran and other corrupt Central American officials.

• “Secuestros, Robos y Corrupcion, los Riesgos de la Migracion Ecuatoriana por el Salvador” (Primicias (Ecuador), May 26, 2024).

On the Right

• Jennie Taer, “Biden’s Ex-Border Chief Denounces Admin’s Policies, Says President Never Called: ‘That’s a Problem’” (The New York Post, May 27, 2024).
• Gabe Whisnant, “Texas Democrat Praises Greg Abbott Amid New Border Wall Construction” (Newsweek, May 27, 2024).
• Maryann Martinez, “Shocking Border Statistics Reveal Countries Migrants Are Flocking From” (The Daily Mail (UK), May 27, 2024).
• Ryan Mills, “Republicans Accuse Biden Admin of Using ‘Mass-Parole Programs’ to Hide ‘Catastrophic’ Border Crisis” (National Review, May 24, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

The Democratic-majority Senate held a “test vote” yesterday on the Border Act, a series of border security and migration measures that resulted from bipartisan negotiations between November and February. Those measures included a provision that would cut off protection-seeking migrants’ access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, Title 42-style, when daily migrant encounters exceed an average of 4,000 (discretionary asylum shutdown) or 5,000 (mandatory asylum shutdown).

The bill needed 60 votes to proceed to open debate and an eventual vote; it failed by a 43-50 margin, with all but 1 Republican voting “no,” along with 6 Democrats (or Democratic-caucusing independents). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called it “a sad day for the Senate, a sad day for America.”

The Border Act was identical to legislation that failed to clear a procedural vote in the Senate on February 7, by a 49-50 margin, when—in response to Republican demands—it was attached to Ukraine and Israel aid.

Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski was the only GOP senator to vote for the bill yesterday; three other Republicans changed their vote to “no.” Two Democrats changed their votes from “yea” to “nay,” as did Democratic-caucusing independent Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona), who helped draft the original February compromise.

• Luke Broadwater, “Border Deal Fails Again in the Senate as Democrats Seek Political Edge” (The New York Times, May 23, 2024).
• Mary Clare Jalonick, Rebecca Santana, Stephen Groves, “Border Bill Fails Senate Test Vote as Democrats Seek to Underscore Republican Resistance” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 23, 2024).
• Clare Foran, Lauren Fox, Priscilla Alvarez, Ted Barrett, “Border Bill Fails in Senate for Second Time, Blocked by Gop Opposition and Democratic Divisions” (CNN, May 23, 2024).
• Rachel Dobkin, “The One Republican Who Voted for Border Bill” (Newsweek, May 23, 2024).

CBS News reported that during the first 21 days of May, Border Patrol has apprehended an average of just 3,700 migrants per day. If that pace continues through the end of the month, May 2024 would be the third-lightest month for migration at the border of the Biden administration’s forty months in office.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Migrant Crossings at U.S.-Mexico Border Plunge 54% From Record Highs, Internal Figures Show” (CBS News, May 23, 2024).

A continuing crackdown in Mexico is a key cause for what has been about a 54 percent drop in migration since the record-setting month of December 2023. “Mexican officials have pledged to help keep encounters at the United States’ southern border below 4,000 a day. But that will depend on whether the country has the money to keep up enforcement,” the Economist reported.

• “Fewer Migrants Are Crossing America’s Southern Border” (The Economist (Uk), May 23, 2024).

4,281 Border Patrol agents left the agency between October 2020 and April 2024, an annual attrition rate of about 6 percent, according to data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Anna Giaritelli of the conservative Washington Examiner. The article cites unnamed agents blaming the Biden administration for low morale; many say morale is low because they cannot detain many apprehended migrants.

As Border Patrol underwent a surge of hiring in the years after September 11, 2001, a large number of agents are completing 20 years on the force and eligible for retirement, Giaritelli notes.

• Anna Giaritelli, “The Biden Effect? Border Patrol Has Lost a Quarter of Workforce Since 2020 Election” (The Washington Examiner, May 23, 2024).
• “Anna Giaritelli @Anna_Giaritelli on Twitter“ (Twitter, May 23, 2024).

Texas’s state Department of Public Safety released aerial video recorded several miles inside New Mexico, near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, showing people throwing sand and a water bottle at Border Patrol agents seeking to apprehend migrants at the border wall.

• Fernie Ortiz, “Video: Border Agents, Migrants Clash at Border Wall” (Border Report, May 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Texas Observer and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting published an in-depth investigation of vigilante groups’ and militias’ activities along the border. The piece highlighted these groups’ illegal actions, their relationships with law enforcement including some media-friendly right-wing sheriffs and some Border Patrol agents, and the dangers they pose to migrants and the rule of law.

• Avery Schmitz, Francesca D’annunzio, “Border Vigilantes Are Blurring the Lines of Law Enforcement” (The Texas Observer, May 23, 2024).

An analysis by Christian Paz at Vox cited politicians’ rhetoric, the economy, and concerns about “chaos” as key reasons for a drop in support for immigration in U.S. public opinion.

• Christian Paz, “3 Theories for America’s Anti-Immigrant Shift” (Vox, May 24, 2024).

The U.S.-Mexico border region is “not a political football or plaything to be bandied about. It’s not the stick to whatever carrot was dangled before the immigrant rights movement,” wrote Marisa Limón Garza of El Paso’s Las Américas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

• Marisa Limon Garza, “Border Bills, Border Shenanigans & Our Border Reality” (Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center (El Paso Texas), May 23, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Today the Democratic-majority Senate will consider the Border Act, a series of border security and migration measures that resulted from bipartisan negotiations between November and February. The most controversial of these is a provision that would cut off protection-seeking migrants’ access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, Title 42-style, when daily migrant encounters exceed an average of 4,000 (discretionary asylum shutdown) or 5,000 (mandatory asylum shutdown).

The Border Act is identical to legislation that failed to clear a procedural vote in the Senate on February 7, when—in response to Republican demands—it was attached to Ukraine and Israel aid (which ultimately passed separately in April). At the time, nearly all Republicans, led by Donald Trump, opposed it, arguing that it was not aggressive enough against migration at the border.

Republican opposition is similarly certain this time, and it appears that fewer Democrats may vote for the bill today than in February, since Ukraine aid is no longer at stake. Still, the Biden administration and Senate Democratic leaders are viewing this defeat as good 2024 electoral strategy: they believe that it undermines Republican arguments that Democrats are insufficiently aggressive about border security, and that it reveals Republicans to be uncooperative.

Still, the result will be that for the second time in four months, most Senate Democrats will go on the record as supporting a historic rollback of threatened people’s right to seek asylum on U.S. soil: a right that emerged in the years after World War II and was cemented into U.S. law in 1980.

• Carl Hulse, “Democrats See Wins in Losing Votes” (The New York Times, May 22, 2024).
• Lauren Fox, Priscilla Alvarez, “Senate Border Bill Exposes Democratic Divisions as White House Attempts to Ramp Up Pressure on Gop” (CNN, May 23, 2024).
• Lauren Gambino, “Senate Democrats to Force Second Vote on Border Bill That Republicans Blocked” (The Guardian (Uk), May 23, 2024).
• Virginia Allen, “Gop Senators Slam Schumer, Call Border Bill Vote ‘Election Year Political Stunt’” (The Daily Signal, May 22, 2024).

Adding to a Politico report from last Friday, NBC News reported today that the Biden administration plans to introduce an executive order in June enabling an asylum “shutdown” similar to that foreseen in the “Border Act.”

The report notes that this legally dubious measure would require much cooperation from Mexico’s government, which would have to accept a large number of non-Mexican migrants deported back across the border after being refused asylum. (This number would greatly exceed ICE’s capacity to deport people back to their often distant countries by air.) Administration officials are “in talks with Mexican leaders to get their crucial buy-in before proceeding” with the executive order, NBC noted.

• Julia Ainsley, Julie Tsirkin, Monica Alba, “The Biden Administration Has a Plan to Shut Down the Border. But It Needs Mexico’s Help.” (NBC News, May 23, 2024).

The chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector reported that agents there apprehended 6,157 migrants during the week of May 15-21. That represents a 39 percent drop in migration over the past 3 weeks in San Diego, which led all 9 of Border Patrol’s U.S.-Mexico border sectors in apprehensions in April. It is possible that San Diego may have dropped from the number-one spot among border sectors; available data, however, do not yet show migration increasing elsewhere along the border.

• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. Mcgurk-Daniel @Usbpchiefsdc on Twitter” (Twitter, May 22, 2024).

CBP reported seizing 11,469 pounds of methamphetamine at the Otay Mesa port of entry near San Diego on Monday. As the agency reported seizing 93,881 pounds of the drug during the first 7 months of fiscal 2024, this single seizure would increase CBP’s yearly meth haul by 12 percent.

• “Cbp Officers Squash Narcotic Smuggling Attempt Intercepting $18 Million Worth of Meth” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, May 22, 2024).

As Mexico continues stepped-up efforts to make it more difficult for migrants to access the U.S.-Mexico border, Border Report reported that a “caravan” of about 1,000-1,200 migrants arrived in Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, while smaller groupings have been departing Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. (Puebla is nearly 600 miles south of the nearest U.S.-Mexico border crossing.)

• Julian Resendiz, “Multiple New Migrant Caravans Setting Off for Us Border” (Border Report, May 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Texas state government’s “Operation Lone Star” has spent more than $11.2 billion on a border crackdown that has racially profiled people (96 percent of those arrested have been of Hispanic origin) and principally ended up charging “people who pose no threat to public safety” for misdemeanor offenses, according to a new report from the ACLU of Texas.

• “Operation Lone Star: Misinformation and Discrimination in Texas Border Enforcement” (ACLU of Texas, May 22, 2024).
• Gaige Davila, “New Report Shows Operation Lone Star Has Spent Billions Arresting People Mostly for Misdemeanors” (Texas Public Radio, May 22, 2024).

A column from Migration Policy Institute President Andrew Selee noted that the early May regional migration summit in Guatemala highlighted the need for greater cooperation and coordination of nations’ migration policies at a time of increased flows.

• Andrew Selee, “Translating Principles Into Action: Countries Set New Agenda on the los Angeles Declaration’s Second Anniversary” (Migration Policy Institute, May 22, 2024).

On the Right

• Emily Crane, “Rotting Human Remains and Children Raped: Why Us Border Patrol Suicides Have Skyrocketed Under Biden” (The New York Post, May 22, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

Border Patrol recorded about 3,000 migrant apprehensions on May 20, according to data obtained by CBS News. No full month of the Biden administration—not even February 2021—has recorded a daily average as low as that.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that “the drop stems from several factors, including the administration’s efforts to expand legal migration channels and increase deportations of those who enter illegally, as well as more immigration enforcement by Mexico.” This appears to acknowledge that Mexico has been accepting a larger number of deportations of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan citizens into its territory under the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 “asylum ban” rule.

• “Camilo Montoya-Galvez @Camiloreports on Twitter” (Twitter, May 21, 2024).

As the Senate majority Democratic leadership seeks to bring the Border Act to a vote this week, with new restrictions on access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s increasingly possible that the bill might get fewer votes than it did in February, when a similar measure attached to Ukraine and Israel aid failed in the face of Republican opposition.

All but five Senate Democrats voted for the bill in February, but the number of defections could be larger this time since Ukraine aid is not at stake—that aid package passed separately in April.

• Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), who voted for the bill in February, declared his opposition.
• A statement from leadership of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus warned that “if this bill passes, it will set back real comprehensive immigration reform by years.”
• Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), the lead Republican in November-February negotiations that appeared to have led to a bipartisan deal on the legislation, said that he will vote “no” this time, changing his vote from February. The Border Act, Lankford told CNN, “is no longer a bill, now it’s a prop.”
• Moderate Republican senators who voted for the bill in February (Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah) are sounding unenthusiastic about voting for it this time, though they still might do so.

Either way, the bill is certain to fail to get the 60 votes that it needs, under Senate rules, to proceed to debate and a vote on passage.

• Burgess Everett, Ursula Perano, “Senate Democrats Set to Lose Support From Their Own Side on Second Border Vote” (Politico, May 21, 2024).
• “Savannah Behrmann @Savbehrmanndc on Twitter” (Twitter, May 21, 2024).
• “Chc Leadership Statement on Senate Efforts to Pass Border Bill” (U.S. House of Representatives, May 21, 2024).
• Kaitlin Lewis, “Republican Will Vote Against His Own Border Bill” (Newsweek, May 22, 2024).
• “Burgess Everett @Burgessev on Twitter” (Twitter, May 21, 2024).
• Daniel Trotta, Nandita Bose, “Biden Reaches Out to Republican Leaders for Support of Border Bill” (Reuters, Reuters, May 21, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Guardian reported San Diego-area aid workers’ struggle to help newly arrived asylum seekers navigate the complicated U.S. system, and to provide supplies to people seeking to turn themselves in to Border Patrol in increasingly remote border areas. “The philanthropic funding, I think due to a lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from both sides of the aisle, has really dried up,” said Erika Pinheiro, director of local aid and advocacy group Al Otro Lado.

• Paulina Velasco, “At the US’s Latest Border Hotspot, Aid Workers Brace for Volatility” (The Guardian (Uk), May 22, 2024).

As the House Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing today on the use of AI for border and other domestic security missions, Faiza Patel and Spencer Reynolds of the Brennan Center for Justice issued policy recommendations to break DHS’s reliance on “unproven programs that rely on algorithms and risk the rights of the tens of millions of Americans.”

• Faiza Patel, Spencer Reynolds, “As Dhs Implements New Ai Technologies, It Must Overcome Old Shortcomings” (Brennan Center for Justice, Just Security, May 21, 2024).

The Texas Observer profiled Laredo environmental advocate Tricia Cortez, who has led forceful local opposition to federal and state attempts to build border walls in and near her city.

• Justin Miller, “Want to Build a Wall? Don’t Try It in Her Town.” (The Texas Observer, May 21, 2024).

“There have been an unusually high number of migrants hospitalized, including young children, in Eagle Pass after coming into contact with the razor wire” that Texas state authorities have laid down along the Rio Grande, noted a USA Today report from the mid-Texas border city.

• Carlie Procell, Rick Jervis, Stephen J. Beard, “Operation Lone Star Explained: What’s Happening in Eagle Pass, Texas?” (USA Today, May 22, 2024).

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Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

Developments

The White House and Senate majority Democratic leadership remain determined to bring the Border Act to a vote this week.

Among its many provisions, this bill includes a temporary mechanism that would shut down access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when daily migrant encounters exceed 4,000 per day (discretionary) or 5,000 per day (mandatory). If passed, this would be a historic rollback of threatened individuals’ half-century-old right to petition for asylum on U.S. soil.

Nonetheless, the White House issued a statement of “strong support” for the bill, and President Joe Biden called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to urge them to support the bill.

Republicans, however, appear poised to block the Border Act in the Senate, where it needs 60 senators to agree to proceed to debate and a vote. Nearly identical legislation, attached to Ukraine and Israel aid, failed to clear this hurdle in the Senate on February 7.

Republicans contend that the bill is not restrictive enough, and are likely unwilling to hand Biden a legislative win on the border-migration issue in an election year. Democrats appear to be calculating that even a legislative loss helps shield them from campaign-season accusations of being insufficiently “aggressive” at the border.

• “Statement From White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Senate Plans to Vote on the Bipartisan Border Security Agreement” (The White House, May 20, 2024).
• “Jake Sherman @Jakesherman on Twitter” (Twitter, May 20, 2024).
• Frank Thorp V, Sahil Kapur, Scott Wong, “Senate Democrats Revive Bipartisan Border Security Bill as Gop Vows to Block It Again” (NBC News, May 20, 2024).
• Luke Broadwater, “Senate to Vote Again on Border Deal as Democrats Seek Political Edge” (The New York Times, May 20, 2024).

Asked by CBS News about the state of Texas’s legal attacks on Annunciation House, a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso, Pope Francis replied: “That is madness. Sheer madness. To close the border and leave them there, that is madness. The migrant has to be received. Thereafter you see how you are going to deal with him. Maybe you have to send him back, I don’t know, but each case ought to be considered humanely. Right?”

• Norah O’Donnell, “Pope Francis tells 60 Minutes in rare interview: ‘the globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease’” (CBS News, May 19, 2024).
• Rebecca Falconer, “Pope Francis on U.S. Border Crisis: Migration “Makes a Country Grow”” (Axios, May 20, 2024).

We’ve heard no new updates on local media reports citing allegations that members of the Texas National Guard severely beat a Honduran migrant on May 17 and pushed him across the borderline from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, where he died of his injuries on the riverbank.

• Herika Martinez Prado, “Atemoriza a Migrantes Muerte de Hondureno” (El Diaro de Juarez (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), May 20, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A UNHCR factsheet noted that 2024 financial requirements for integrating Venezuelan migrants in Latin American countries are only 15 percent fulfilled, increasing the likelihood that some may fail to integrate and move on to the United States.

• “Venezuela Situation Factsheet May 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, May 20, 2024).

On the Right

• Jennie Taer, “Migrants Rushing to Cross Border Now in Case Biden Loses in November: ‘We Don’t Want Trump’” (The New York Post, May 20, 2024).

Daily Border Links are following a sporadic publication schedule between May 3 and July 19. Regular daily updates will return on July 22.

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Developments

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) confirmed that the body’s Democratic majority intends to bring the “Border Act” to a vote this week. The legislation incorporates provisions of a bill that failed in the Senate in early February after months of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.

Of its many provisions, the most controversial is a mechanism that would shut down access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border if daily migrant encounters exceed 4,000 or 5,000 per day.

This provision’s inclusion in the earlier bill, which also included Ukraine and Israel aid, was a large concession for Democrats, but Republicans still rejected it, echoing Donald Trump’s argument that it did not go far enough.

If the Border Act goes to a vote this week, it is unclear whether any Republicans will support it. But it would be the second time in three months that Senate Democrats go on the record supporting a historic rollback of threatened migrants’ right to seek asylum in the United States.

The White House and some leading Senate Democrats view the bill as a means to take the border issue away from Republicans during the election year by appearing “aggressive.” However, migrants’ rights advocates are urging Senate leaders not to take this step because of its potential for harm.

• “Sahil Kapur @Sahilkapur on Twitter” (Twitter, May 19, 2024).
• Daniel Trotta, “Schumer Says Us Senate Will Try Again to Pass Border Bill” (Reuters, Reuters, May 19, 2024).
• Mj Lee, Priscilla Alvarez, “White House and Democratic Lawmakers Plot Ways to Strengthen Their Hand on Border Security” (CNN, May 18, 2024).

Local media are reporting that a Honduran migrant died just south of the borderline between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez after being severely beaten. Other migrants allege that the victim’s assailants were members of the Texas National Guard, who prevented them from crossing to the U.S. side to turn themselves in to U.S. federal authorities.

If accurate, the incident would be the first time in decades that a U.S. soldier purposefully killed a civilian on U.S. soil.

• Liliana Torreso, “‘Pedimos Ayuda Pero No Nos Hicieron Caso’: Migrantes por Hondureno Asesinado en el Rio” (El Heraldo de Juarez (Mexico), May 17, 2024).
• Juan Carlos Ortega, “Migrante Hondureno Muere en la Frontera de ee.uu. Tras Ser Golpeado por Policias” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala), May 19, 2024).

After U.S. authorities sent another deportation flight to Haiti on May 16, UNHCR’s U.S. office urged them to refrain from doing that again while the Caribbean nation’s public security emergency persists.

• “Unhcr United States @Unhcrusa on Twitter” (Twitter, May 17, 2024).

Despite concerns about the Salvadoran security forces’ human rights record and democratic backsliding, the U.S. government has granted them drone equipment valued at $4.5 million, which “will be employed along the border regions to reinforce El Salvador’s security against illegal smuggling and migrant crossings,” EFE reported, citing a U.S. embassy statement. The recipient unit is the armed forces’ Sumpul Task Force, a unit that focuses primarily on borders.

• “Estados Unidos Dona Drones a el Salvador para Vigilar Los “Cruces Ilegales” de Migrantes” (EFE, Swissinfo.ch, May 18, 2024).

Of the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border, the two that have seen the most migration since January are Tucson, Arizona and San Diego, California. Both sectors have seen two weeks of declining migrant encounters, according to Twitter posts from their chiefs.

• “Adam Isacson @adam_wola on Twitter” (Twitter, May 20, 2024).
• Elliot Spagat, “The Latest Hot Spot for Illegal Border Crossings Is San Diego. But Routes Change Quickly” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 17, 2024).
• Alexandra Mendoza, “Shifting Migrant Routes Make San Diego the New Hot Spot for Illegal Border Crossings” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 18, 2024).

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been claiming that his state government’s border crackdown has reduced migration there and pushed it to states further west. In fact, though, Arizona—not Texas—has seen the steepest declines in migration since the record-setting month of December, according to data released last week by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Migrant encounters have in fact risen 5 percent in Texas since January as they declined 30 percent in Arizona.

• “Adam Isacson @adam_wola on Twitter” (Twitter, May 17, 2024).

“Historically, this sector had been number one in irregular migrants,” Andres Garcia, a Border Patrol spokesman in the agency’s Rio Grande Valley sector in south Texas, told a gathering of Latin American journalists. “Now we are down to number four. What is happening? It doesn’t depend on us, it depends on the ‘logistics’ on the Mexican side. I’m talking about the criminal organizations that move this traffic through other areas of the border.”

• Arturo Sanchez Jimenez, “Bajo Control de Carteles, el Flujo a Eu de Migrantes Irregulares: Border Patrol” (La Jornada (Mexico), May 19, 2024).

The presidents of Mexico and Guatemala met in the border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas, on May 17. Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Bernardo Arévalo agreed to deepen collaboration on border and migration management and to improve official border crossing infrastructure.

• “Mexico and Guatemala Strengthen Border Collaboration on Security and Human Mobility for the Wellbeing of Their Peoples” (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexico), May 17, 2024).
• Edgar H. Clemente, “Mexican and Guatemalan Presidents Meet at Border to Discuss Migration, Security and Development” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 17, 2024).

The director of Panama’s migration agency, Samira Gozaine, told the Associated Press that high costs and coordination challenges would make it impossible for incoming President-Elect José Raúl Mulino to carry out his campaign pledge to deport migrants passing through the treacherous Darién Gap region.

• Alma Solis, “Panama No Puede Hacer Deportaciones Masivas de Inmigrantes, Reconoce Funcionaria” (Associated Press, Associated Press, May 17, 2024).

CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating whether top Border Patrol officials, including Chief Jason Owens and Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Gloria Chavez, properly disclosed their contacts with Eduardo Garza, owner of a prominent Laredo-based customs brokerage company.

NBC News broke the story, adding to an earlier report that “Owens and Chavez are already under investigation by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility for their contacts with [tequila maker Francisco Javier] González, who wanted to make a Border Patrol-branded tequila to celebrate the agency’s 100th anniversary this month.”

• Didi Martinez, Julia Ainsley, Laura Strickler, “Border Patrol Officials Who Partied With Tequila Mogul Are Also Under Investigation for Ties to Wealthy Border Businessman” (NBC News, May 17, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Since 2014, U.S. immigration courts have heard 1,047,134 asylum cases, and granted asylum or other deportation relief in 685,956 of them (66%), according to Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration data project.

• “Two-Thirds of Court Asylum Applicants Found Legally Entitled to Remain” (TRAC Immigration, May 17, 2024).

Of the more than 500,000 Nicaraguan people who have migrated to the United States since a 2018 crackdown on dissent, many have not applied for asylum, leaving their documented status uncertain, the Inter-American Dialogue’s Manuel Orozco told the independent media outlet Confidencial.

• Carlos F. Chamorro, “Medio Millon de Migrantes Nicas Necesitan Asilo Politico en Ee. Uu.” (Confidencial (Nicaragua), May 20, 2024).

Due to an extended period of staff travel and commitments, we are producing “Daily Border Links” posts less regularly between May 3 and July 19. We will be unable to post Daily Border Links at all between May 3 and May 17. Following this period, Daily Border Links will again be “daily,” with minor interruptions, between July 22 and the end of the year.

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Developments

The chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector—the westernmost of the agency’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors—reported that agents there apprehended 10,023 migrants during the week of April 24-30. That cements San Diego’s status as the border’s busiest sector, a position it has not held since the late 1990s.

• Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter (Twitter, May 1, 2024).

Border Patrol agents had already been making asylum seekers wait for hours or days in the open air at the sector’s California borderline before being able to process them. Now, the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli reported based on a leaked internal document, some migrants are hiking into rural California seeking to turn themselves in directly to Border Patrol stations or other law enforcement facilities.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Illegal Immigrants Hiking Miles Into California in Search of Police as Border Patrol Is Stretched Thin” (The Washington Examiner, May 1, 2024).

A letter from 32 Democratic members of Congress urged House appropriators to avoid funding any federal government activities that involve collaboration with the Texas state government’s “Operation Lone Star.” The letter noted that “groups have documented repeated cases of Border Patrol turning over migrants to Texas state law enforcement instead of processing them for immigration purposes and ensuring they have access to legal protections for those fleeing violence and danger.”

• Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), “Congressmen Greg Casar, Joaquin Castro, & Colleagues Are Urging Federal Agencies to Not Participate in Operation Lone Star” (U.S. House of Representatives, May 1, 2024).

In leaked audio of a phone conversation with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham complained that Border Patrol is focusing resources on seizing state-licensed cannabis at interior checkpoints. “They’re saying that they’re worried about fentanyl. So they’re taking all of our cannabis,” the governor was heard saying. “For the love of God, put them at the border in Sunland Park [west of El Paso] where I don’t have a single Border Patrol agent, not one. And people pour over, and so I’m cranky with the secretary.”

• Tommy Lopez, “Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Heard Voicing Frustration Over Border Issue in Phone Call” (KOB (Albequerque New Mexico), May 2, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A report from Human Rights Watch detailed how rules mandating use of the CBP One app restrict access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, forcing many to wait for months in precarious and vulnerable conditions inside Mexico. The report included examples of people kidnapped for ransom by Mexican criminal groups while awaiting appointments. CBP personnel, it found, routinely turn asylum seekers away from ports of entry, even when they say they are in danger, because they did not use the app to make appointments. The report called on DHS to stop making the app’s use mandatory and instead increase processing capacity at border ports of entry, while increasing adjudication capacity to reduce asylum case backlogs.

• “‘We Couldn’t Wait’ Digital Metering at the Us-Mexico Border” (Human Rights Watch, May 1, 2024).
• Thomas Graham, “Us Asylum App Strands Migrants and Aids Organised Crime, Rights Group Says” (The Guardian (Uk), May 1, 2024).
• Sandra Sanchez, “Report: ‘Fundamental’ Asylum Rights Denied by Cbp One App” (Border Report, May 1, 2024).

“The Right Way,” a video produced by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, profiled a Venezuelan family who had to wait for five months in Ciudad Juárez for a CBP One appointment, during the 2023 period when 40 migrants died in a detention center fire in the city.

• Gerardo del Valle, ““the Right Way”: From Venezuela to Juarez and New York to Denver, One Family’s Asylum Journey” (Propublica, Texas Tribune, ProPublica, May 2, 2024).

An article by the Migration Policy Institute evaluated the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy, which expired a year ago on May 11. Despite nearly 3 million expulsions, it found, migration at the U.S.-Mexico border reached new highs during the 38 months that the policy was in place. The report debunked claims that bringing back Title 42 or a similar “asylum shutdown” policy would deter or significantly reduce irregular migration: “While Title 42 offers a campaign-style slogan to shut down the border, the reality is that it never met that promise. And whatever outcomes it had came at the very sizeable cost of reneging on decades of U.S. commitments to guaranteeing humanitarian protection.”

• Julian Montalvo, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, Muzaffar Chishti, “Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border” (Migration Policy Institute, May 1, 2024).

On the Right

• Michael Lee, “Mexico’s Migrant Bussing Spree a Lifeline for Biden on Border Crisis: Expert” (Fox News, May 1, 2024).

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Developments

Migration through the Darién Gap has declined in April, a surprising development confirmed by an April 29 press release from Panama’s migration authority. The release reported that 136,523 people had migrated through the treacherous region since January 1, a number that stood at 110,008 on March 31. That means the average daily traffic through the Darién was 947 people per day during the first 28 days of April. That is the second-lowest daily average of any month since February 2023.

Similarly, a look at Honduras’s statistics shows a daily average of 1,281 over the first 24 days of April, which is also down significantly from 1,473 in March and 1,701 in February.

• Gozaine Reitera Que Darien No Es una Ruta y Destaca Personas Con Record Criminal Que Utilizan la Selva para Seguir su Paso Hacia Norteamerica (Servicio Nacional de Migración (Panama), Monday, April 29, 2024).

The Huffington Post’s Roque Planas, who broke a story in February about Border Patrol agents’ frequent use of the slur “tonk” to describe migrants, published new revelations from the agency’s internal emails and text messages. The communications, from 2017 to 2020, reveal agents joking about beating or poisoning migrants. “Now you’re leaning left and sounding like a snowflake,” wrote one agent after a colleague used the word “migrant” to describe a migrant.

• Roque Planas, “Uncovered Emails Reveal Border Patrol Agent’s Horrific Jokes About Children” (The Huffington Post, April 30, 2024).

Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) top official, Troy Miller, testified Tuesday before the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Questioning noted that Border Patrol’s apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen recently to about 3,900 per day; members of Congress credited Mexico’s stepped up migrant interdiction operations. Miller noted that he has “an individual, a senior advisor assigned to me that is solely dedicated to working with Mexico.”

• Hearing of the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee on Fiscal Year 2025 Request for Customs and Border Protection (U.S. House of Representatives, April 30, 2024).

A front-page Washington Post story cites U.S. officials’ belief that the Mexican government’s crackdown on migration is “the biggest factor” explaining 2024’s relative decline in migration at the border. Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions in April totaled “about 130,000,” reporter Nick Miroff revealed; that would be a decline from 140,638 reported in February and 137,480 in March. “The next several weeks will be a key test” of Mexico’s interdiction operations, officials told Miroff.

• Nick Miroff, “A Quieter Border Eases Pressure on Biden, With a Hand From Mexico” (The Washington Post, April 30, 2024).

The Associated Press reported, citing White House national security spokesman John Kirby, that U.S. cooperation with Mexico to curb migration will intensify in the areas of “prevent[ing] major modes of transportation from being used to facilitate illegal migration to the border, as well as the number of repatriation flights that would return migrants to their home countries.”

• Seung Min Kim, “Us and Mexico Will Boost Deportation Flights and Enforcement to Crack Down on Illegal Migration” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 30, 2024).
• George R. Tyler, “Why Is Mexico Helping to Solve Biden’s Border Problem?” (The National Interest, April 30, 2024).

A release from the Government Accountability Project regretted that CBP’s testimony did not address whistleblowers’ complaints about contracting failures in the agency’s medical care system for migrants in custody, which they allege contributed to a child’s preventable death in Texas in May 2023. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Illinois) asked Miller about measures taken in the aftermath of 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez’s in-custody death.

• “Statement Urging Congressional Oversight of Cbp Medical Budget” (Government Accountability Project, April 30, 2024).

Two women were hospitalized and in need of “higher level care” after falling from the border wall in San Diego, local news reported. In San Diego, the report added, “This year so far, at least five migrants have died as a result of a border wall fall, while dozens more have been injured.”

• Danielle Dawson, “Two Migrants Injured in Fall From Border Wall Near San Diego” (Border Report, April 30, 2024).

Four U.S. senators—two Democrats and two Republicans—sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas voicing concerns, and requesting information about, CBP’s warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at border crossings. The signers included Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Wyden, Peters, Paul, and Crapo Press Dhs on Use of Authority to Download Personal Device Data at Borders (U.S. Senate, Monday, April 29, 2024).
• Kyle Davidson, “Peters Presses Dhs Officials on Searching Electronic Devices at the Border” (Michigan Advance, May 1, 2024).

NOTUS reported that two Texas border counties’ police departments—Webb (Laredo) and Val Verde (Del Rio)—have purchased “TraffiCatch,” surveillance technology that tracks cellphone and Bluetooth signals and matches them to license plates. The counties used federal grant money (Operation Stonegarden) to buy the systems. “We are well beyond the idea that people have no privacy in public,” said Jennifer Granick of the ACLU. “Here, they’re installing this mass surveillance system. The public doesn’t know about it.”

• Byron Tau, “War Zone Surveillance Technology Is Hitting American Streets” (NOTUS, April 30, 2024).

Mexico has sent 600 troops to its northeastern border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León amid worsening violence between competing criminal groups.

• Julian Resendiz, “Mexico Sends 600 Soldiers to Border States Amid Spike in Violence” (Border Report, April 30, 2024).

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) imposition of secondary state “safety inspections” at El Paso ports of entry—apparently a tactic to force Mexico to do more to block migrants—has snarled cargo traffic from Ciudad Juárez, “stopping the movement of 1,344 units in two days, representing 87.4 million dollars in merchandise,” according to a local freight transportation association.

• Axel Sanchez, “Canacar: Revision de Camiones en Chihuahua-Texas Frena 87.4 Mdd” (Milenio (Mexico), April 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation drew a straight line between years of U.S. border and migration policies—including “outsourcing” of enforcement to Mexico—and the March 2023 detention facility fire that killed 40 migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Nothing has changed about U.S. policy since; “If migrant deaths would lead to policy change, we would have changed policies a long time ago,” migration expert Stephanie Leutert told reporter Perla Trevizo.

• Perla Trevizo, “How Shifting U.S. Policies Led to One of the Deadliest Incidents Involving Immigrants in Mexico’s History” (Propublica, Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune, May 1, 2024).

Noticias Telemundo and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP) published a third installment of a series, begun yesterday, documenting the increasing and dangerous use of tractor-trailers to transport migrants across Mexico. The illicit smuggling business has come more directly under big national cartels’ control and depends on widespread corruption among immigration and security forces. The report, relying on a database of more than 170 trucks that crashed, were detained, or were abandoned between 2018 and 2023, offers many examples.

• Albinson Linares, Angela Cantador, Ronny Rojas, “Traileres, Trampa para Migrantes” (CLIP, Noticias Telemundo, Chiapas Paralelo (Chiapas), April 30, 2024).

Human Rights Watch released a report moments ago documenting rights violations resulting from CBP’s requirement that asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border use the CBP One app, combined with the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 asylum “transit ban” rule.

• “HRW Blasts Us Use of Mobile App for Asylum Seekers” (Agence France Presse, Barron’s, May 1, 2024).

The New York Times dug into the story of a counterfeit flier, attributed to a migrant aid group in Matamoros, Mexico, that urged migrants to vote for Joe Biden. Though it was a forgery, the Heritage Foundation think tank and several Republican politicians shared it publicly.

• Ken Bensinger, “A Mysterious Flier, a Tiny Charity and a Disinformation Campaign at the Border” (The New York Times, April 30, 2024).

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Developments

In an April 28 phone conversation, U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador discussed joint action to keep border crossing numbers down. “The two leaders ordered their national security teams to work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights,” read a joint statement.

The statement did not specify what these new measures might be, but an unnamed senior Biden administration official told the New York Times that possibilities included efforts “to prevent railways, buses and airports from being used for illegal border crossing and more flights taking migrants back to their home countries.”

The call took place at Biden’s request. An ongoing Mexican crackdown is a widely cited reason for a drop in irregular migration since January at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Border Patrol chiefs’ weekly updates have noted increases in migration to San Diego and Tucson, and recent days saw large numbers of migrants arriving, mostly by train, in Ciudad Juárez across from El Paso.

• “Joint Statement by the President of the United States Joe Biden and the President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador” (The White House, April 29, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, Michael D. Shear, “Biden and Mexico’s President Vow Combined Action on Illegal Immigration” (The New York Times, April 29, 2024).
• Maria Verza, Seung Min Kim, “President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Discuss Migration in Latest Call” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 29, 2024).
• Rafael Bernal, “Biden, Mexican President Eye ‘Significantly’ Reducing Border Crossings” (The Hill, April 29, 2024).
• Isabella Cota, Miguel Jimenez, “Biden and Lopez Obrador Agree to Take Measures to Tackle Migration on Us-Mexico Border” (El Pais (Spain), April 29, 2024).

A collaborative effort among several Latin American journalistic outlets documented migrant smugglers’ dangerous but widespread use of tractor-trailers as a key vector for moving people through Mexico to the U.S. border.

In Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, an organization called the Cartel de Chamula, whose members are largely Indigenous Tzotzil people and which has been aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, dominates migrant smuggling operations, the reporters found. Chiapas was the scene of a December 2021 tractor-trailer accident that killed 56 of about 200 migrants whom smugglers had stuffed into its container. The report found that endemic corruption at all levels of government enables the smugglers’ operation.

• Angela Cantador, Ángeles Mariscal, Brenda Medina, Jody Garcia, Maria Teresa Ronderos, Ronny Rojas, “Crimen, Impunidad y Muerte Detras de la Migracion en Chiapas” (Chiapas paralelo, CLIP, ICIJ, Plaza Pública, Telemundo, ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 29, 2024).

The reporting project interviewed “Alberto,” a truck driver whom criminal groups have coerced into transporting migrants from Michoacán to Mexico’s northern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gulf Cartel “is the one that transports migrants.” The migrants aboard pay steep fees—often about US$800—for their transport, which is facilitated by corrupt arrangements, including bribes to Mexican National Guardsmen and other officials.

The truck driver detailed how corrupt authorities allow his human cargo to pass through road checkpoints. The National Guard’s price, Alberto said, is “500 pesos per migrant” (about US$30) every time guardsmen stop the truck. If the National Migration Institute (INM) stops the truck because no payments were made in advance, Alberto added, the migration agents charge 1,000 pesos (US$60) per migrant.

• Martha Olivia Lopez, “Testimonio de un Trailero: Como Es Traficar Migrantes a la Fuerza” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 29, 2024).

The Texas state government’s aggressive “secondary inspections” of cargo trucks entering El Paso have increased truckers’ wait times in Ciudad Juárez from the usual one hour to eight hours, costing the industry about $32 million per day. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) uses these “safety” checks, which force truckers to undergo double inspections at border crossings—first federal, then state—“to pressure U.S. and Mexican officials to prevent mass illegal migration,” Border Report noted. CBP is responding by increasing hours of operation at nearby ports of entry.

• Julian Resendiz, “Texas Inspections Again Snarl Truck Traffic at Mexican Border” (Border Report, April 29, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “Texas Truck Inspections Costing Border Industry $32 Million a Day, Juarez Official Says” (Border Report, April 29, 2024).

New UNHCR reports estimated that more than 166,000 irregular migrants crossed into southeastern Honduras from Nicaragua during the first three months of 2024. Only about 20 percent of migrants did not register with the Honduran government, which is a required step for boarding buses across the country. At least 148,000 exited Honduras into Guatemala during the first quarter.

The number of people transiting Honduras is greater than that of people transiting the Darién Gap because many migrants are flying into Nicaragua, which has loose visa requirements for many nationalities.

• “Honduras – Mixed Movements South-Eastern Border Situation Report #6 – March 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, April 29, 2024).
• “Honduras – Mixed Movements Western Border Situation Report #1 – March 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, April 29, 2024).

A joint statement following an April 29 U.S.-Brazil migration dialogue praised Brazil’s “Operation Welcome,” which has documented and integrated over 500,000 Venezuelan migrants since 2018.

• “Joint Statement on United States – Brazil Bilateral Dialogue on Migration Policies, Humanitarian Issues, and Refugee Protection” (U.S. Department of State, April 29, 2024).

Following a mistrial last week after the jury could not agree on a verdict, prosecutors in Nogales, Arizona will not seek to retry George Alan Kelly, a rancher who fired his AK-47 at a group of migrants on his cattle ranch in January 2023, killing a 48-year-old Mexican man.

• “Prosecutors Say They Will Not Retry George Alan Kelly, Arizona Rancher Accused of Murder Near the Us-Mexico Border” (CBS News, April 29, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

While migration and the border are top-tier issues for voters in the 2024 U.S. election campaign, “migration occupies a secondary place” on voters’ list of concerns ahead of Mexico’s June 2024 elections, columnist Olga Pellicer wrote at Mexico’s Proceso. As more migrants become stranded in Mexico, Pellicer noted, the danger of xenophobia rises, and the Mexican government’s lack of an institutional framework becomes more evident.

• Olga Pellicer, “Elecciones y Migracion” (Proceso (Mexico), April 29, 2024).

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Developments

Over 1,000 migrants arrived in Ciudad Juárez atop train cars, despite Mexico’s months-long operations to block northbound migration. Many headed to the Rio Grande to seek to turn themselves in to Border Patrol to seek asylum, but Texas state authorities have blocked most of them on the riverbank.

• “Miles de Migrantes Que Llegan en Tren a Mexicana Ciudad Juarez Deambulan por el Rio Bravo” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), April 26, 2024).

It is one of the largest mass arrivals of migrants at the border during a 2024 calendar year marked by a Mexican government crackdown that has made it more difficult for migrants to get across Mexico’s territory. “Some U.S. officials are attributing the surge to a concerted effort by transnational criminal organizations” in Mexico to move migrants northward, according to Border Report.

• Julian Resendiz, “Border Patrol Says It’s Ready for New Migrant Surge in el Paso” (Border Report, April 25, 2024).

In response, Texas’s state National Guard has stocked up on less-lethal “pepperball” ammunition, while state police have stepped up “safety inspections” of cargo trucks crossing into El Paso. The state checkpoints begin shortly after trucks cross official ports of entry. This double inspection—federal, then state—is causing hours-long delays at border crossings into El Paso.

• Jennie Taer, “Texas Authorities Armed With ‘Thousands’ of Pepperballs Instructed to Go Full Force Against Migrants Arriving by ‘the Beast’ Train to el Paso Border” (The New York Post, April 26, 2024).
• Jesus Estrada, Ruben Villalpando, “La Jornada: Larga Espera en el Cruce de Juarez por Doble Revision a Camiones” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 28, 2024).

Migrants in Ciudad Juárez told EFE that they crossed to the U.S. side of the Rio Grande to ask U.S. authorities for asylum, but Texas state National Guard personnel aggressively pushed them back into Mexico.

The mostly Venezuelan migrants added that they fear Mexican organized crime more than Mexican migration authorities, but their fear of authorities mistreating them—or even handing them over to criminals—prevents them from asking for help.

• “Migrantes Temen a Crimen Organizado Tras Matanza en Ciudad Juarez” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), April 28, 2024).

Mexican authorities stopped a Ciudad Juárez-bound tractor trailer with 131 migrants inside. 108 were from Guatemala, 22 from Ecuador, and 1 was from El Salvador. Fourteen were unaccompanied children.

• Julian Resendiz, “Mexico Stops Trailer With 131 Migrants South of Juarez” (Border Report, April 25, 2024).

Someone on the Mexico side of the U.S.-Mexico border fired a weapon at an agent near San Elizario, in eastern El Paso county, on April 25. CBP has reported no injuries or other information about the incident.

• Fernie Ortiz, “El Paso Border Agent Involved in Use-of-Force Incident, Agency Says” (Border Report, April 26, 2024).
• Aaron Martinez, “Suspect in Mexico Shot at Us Border Patrol Agent Near San Elizario” (The El Paso Times, April 25, 2024).

USA Today covered Mexican forces’ strategy, intensified so far in 2024, of busing migrants away from the U.S. border zone and into the country’s interior, often Mexico’s far south. This, analysts told reporter Lauren Villagrán, has done more than Texas’s state crackdown to reduce recent migration into Texas. The Mexican government is relying less on international deportation or long-term detention.

• Lauren Villagran, “The Real Migrant Bus King of North America Isn’t the Texas Governor. It’s Mexico’s President.” (USA Today, April 28, 2024).

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that he plans to meet with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo at the end of May, probably near the two countries’ border. Migration will be among the topics of discussion between the outgoing Mexican president and the recently inaugurated Guatemalan leader.

• “Presidentes de Mexico y Guatemala se Reuniran en la Frontera” (ACAN-EFE, Prensa Libre (Guatemala), April 28, 2024).

Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office raided the Guatemala City offices of Save the Children, apparently looking for evidence of abuse of migrant children. Prosecutors “claimed Save the Children and a number of other non-governmental groups could ‘be participating in child trafficking operations,’” the Associated Press reported.

Save the Children stated that its staff have done nothing wrong, and noted that the prosecutor’s office has made no specific allegations.

Political motivations, with U.S. links, are a likely factor. The secretary general of the Attorney General’s Office issued a video, distributed by Fox News, calling on Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) to aid his investigation. Paxton recently sought legal action against Annunciation House, an El Paso migrant shelter, but was rebuffed by a state judge.

In Guatemala, the attorney general is a separate branch of government, not part of the executive branch headed by President Arévalo. The current attorney-general, Consuelo Porras, has aggressively sought to prosecute anti-corruption judicial operators and journalists, is a frequent hindrance to Arévalo, and faces strict U.S. sanctions for links to corruption and anti-democratic behavior.

• Sonia Perez D., “Save the Children Disputes Abuse Allegations After Guatemalan Prosecutors Raid Offices” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 26, 2024).
• Heidi Loarca Oliva, “Aliado del Mp Revela Intencion de Allanar Save the Children” (La Hora (Guatemala), April 26, 2024).
• Cesar Perez Marroquin, “Feci Allana Oficinas de Save the Children por Caso de Abuso Contra Ninos” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala), April 25, 2024).
• Alan Amaury, “Save the Children Niega Acusaciones de Trafico en Guatemala” (Milenio (Mexico), April 25, 2024).
• “Mp de Guatemala @mpguatemala_en” (Twitter, April 25, 2024).

San Diego’s county supervisor said that Border Patrol agents in the border’s westernmost sector—rather suddenly the busiest part of the border—apprehended 2,000 people on April 23 alone. CBP has released more than 30,000 migrants onto the city’s streets since February, when a county-run reception center shut down for lack of funding.

• Andrea Castillo, “San Diego Is Now the Top Border Region for Migrant Arrivals” (The Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2024).
• Salvador Rivera, “San Diego Is the ‘Epicenter’ for Illegal Immigration, County Supervisor Says” (Border Report, April 26, 2024).
• Lauren Irwin, “San Diego Official Says City Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Border Crisis” (The Hill, April 26, 2024).

In Colombia, a draft resolution appeared to indicate that the government was going to begin requiring Venezuelan citizens in the country to possess a passport. If that were to occur and Venezuelans faced such a barrier to documented status in Colombia, a U.S.-bound exodus through the Darién Gap would be likely. After an outcry, the Colombian government walked this back; President Gustavo Petro denied that a passport requirement was in the offing.

• “Polemica por Pasaportes Venezolanos Reaviva el Debate Sobre la Politica Migratoria” (El Espectador (Colombia), April 26, 2024).

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Lou Correa (D-California) urges CBP to explore making greater use of artificial intelligence at the border.

• Hanna Kang, “Bill Asks if Ai Could Strengthen Border Security” (Orange County Register, Government Technology, April 26, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

An update from UNHCR broke down, by country, the 1.157 million refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced people currently in Mexico and Central America. This is about double the figure from 2020.

• “Forced Displacement in and From El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras | Jan 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, April 26, 2024).

An article from the Migration Policy Institute recalled that the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions policy did not reduce migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Julian Montalvo, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, Muzaffar Chishti, “Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border” (Migration Policy Institute, April 25, 2024).

A report from the Center for Migration Studies calls for deep, long-term reforms to the U.S. immigration court system’s staffing and infrastructure, along with other reforms to the immigration system, to reduce the system’s backlog of more than 2.5 million cases. Because of that backlog, most asylum seekers released into the U.S. interior from the border can expect to remain in the immigration court system for years. A “BacklogPredictor” tool helps estimate future backlogs and resource needs based on different assumptions.

• Brendan Kerwin, Donald Kerwin, “What Will It Take to Eliminate the Immigration Court Backlog? Assessing “Judge Team” Hiring Needs Based on Changed Conditions and the Need for Broader Reform” (Center for Migration Studies, April 29, 2024).

The New York Times reported on how portraying migration at the border as an “invasion,” which only recently was considered an extreme, marginal position, is now a staple of mainstream Republican politicians’ rhetoric.

• Jazmine Ulloa, “Talk of an Immigrant ‘Invasion’ Grows in Republican Ads and Speech” (The New York Times, April 26, 2024).

The mistrial of George Kelly, an Arizona rancher who shot and killed a migrant on his property, is emblematic of the polarized, politicized, and complicated situation along the border today, explained an essay by Rachel Monroe at the New Yorker.

• Rachel Monroe, “What George Kelly’s Mistrial Says About How We See the Border” (The New Yorker, April 25, 2024).

An Axios poll found half of U.S. respondents favoring mass deportations of undocumented migrants. On the other hand, 58 percent said they support expanding legal immigration pathways, and 46 percent favored protecting asylum seekers with “legitimate” cases.

• Margaret Talev, Russell Contreras, “Exclusive Poll: America Warms to Mass Deportations” (Axios, April 25, 2024).

Texas state “border czar” Mike Banks, a former career Border Patrol agent, told USA Today, “Over the next five years … we’re going to continue building tactical infrastructure. We’re going to continue building border wall. Right now, our current pace is about one mile a week. We’re going to put up things like the border buoy barriers.”

• Lauren Villagran, “Should Americans Be Worried About the Border? The First Texas Border Czar Says Yes.” (USA Today, April 25, 2024).

On the Right

• Lewis M. Andrews, “Why Are the Charities Enabling Illegal Immigration Still Tax-Exempt?” (Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, The American Conservative, April 28, 2024).
• Virginia Allen, “6 Reasons Why Chinese Nationals Are Illegally Crossing California’s Southern Border” (The Daily Signal, April 28, 2024).

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Developments

The chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego, California sector reported that agents there apprehended migrants 9,513 times over the seven days ending April 23. That is a 6 percent increase over the previous week and a 36 percent increase over two weeks prior. For the first time since the late 1990s, San Diego is almost certainly the busiest of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors.

Volunteers providing humanitarian aid to asylum seekers waiting in open-air sites along the California border say that numbers are increasing there; donors are encouraged to contribute needed items on an Amazon wishlist.

• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. Mcgurk-Daniel @Usbpchiefsdc on Twitter” (Twitter, April 24, 2024).

Five centrist Democrats who had voted last Saturday for a very strict Republican-led border bill issued a statement yesterday doubling down on their position. The Democrats called on President Biden to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy and to begin Title 42-style expulsions of asylum seekers, while full-throatedly endorsing the Border Patrol union’s hardline stance on border security.

• Andrew Solender, “Centrist Democrats Want to Refocus on Border Security” (Axios, April 24, 2024).
• “Andrew Solender @AndrewSolender on Twitter“ (Twitter, April 24, 2024).

In Mexico’s northern border state of Chihuahua, national guardsmen detained 150 Central American migrants who were staying in a hotel in the state capital. In Ciudad Juárez—Chihuahua’s largest city, across from El Paso—guardsmen, immigration agents, and municipal police carried out an operation to prevent 400 migrants who had arrived atop a cargo train from reaching the borderline.

• Julian Resendiz, “Hundreds of Migrants on Trains Arrive at el Paso-Juarez Border” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).
• Jesus Estrada, “Detienen en Chihuahua a 150 Centroamericanos” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 24, 2024).

The Biden administration has paused court-ordered remediation of environmental damage caused by Trump-era border wall construction, citing litigation in a separate case involving the state of Texas. The Sierra Club, Southern Border Communities Coalition, and ACLU announced yesterday that they are seeking to intervene in the Texas case in order to restart remediation projects.

• “Sierra Club, Southern Border Communities Coalition, and Aclu Act to Protect Border Wall Remediation Settlement Amid Texas Court Decision” (Southern Border Communities Coalition, April 24, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The National Immigration Forum and other centrist groups (Niskanen Center, Hispanic Leadership Fund, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, State Business Executives, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Border Perspective) published a proposed “border security and management framework” document. It calls for creating a corps of asylum officers to adjudicate most protection claims at the border in less than two months, along with increased resources for U.S. border security agencies and drug interdiction technologies.

• “Coalition Border Security & Management Framework” (National Immigration Forum, April 24, 2024).
• Sandra Sanchez, “Groups Release ‘Pragmatic’ Proposal for Border Security Framework Plan” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).

CalMatters reported on lengthening wait times at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego, amid increased cross-border traffic and longstanding CBP Field Operations staffing and infrastructure deficiencies.

• Wendy Fry, “Long Border Waits” (CalMatters, LAist, April 24, 2024).

Wait times for cargo at the busy commercial port of entry in Laredo, Texas have also been worsening, though Mexican government software glitches seem to be much of the cause.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Laredo Officials Vow to Better Tame Truck Backlog on Border Roadways” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).

On the Right

• John Binder, “Joe Biden’s Latest Billions for Ukraine Could Build Entire U.S. Border Wall” (Breitbart, April 24, 2024).
• Jordan Boyd, “Biden’s Trafficking Czar Ignores Human Trafficking on U.S. Border” (The Federalist, April 24, 2024).

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Developments

Mexican migration agents pulled 400 migrants off of a cargo train in rural Chihuahua, Mexico, leaving them stranded in the desert, the human rights organization Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA) denounced. The group included 150 children and 7 pregnant women. Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) stepped up its operations in Chihuahua, the northern border state that includes Ciudad Juárez, at the beginning of April.

• Veronica Martinez, “Frena Inm Tren Con Migrantes en Desierto de Samalayuca, Deja a las Personas Sin Agua y Alimentos” (La Verdad (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), April 23, 2024).
• “DHIA, A.C. @DhiaAc on Twitter“ (Twitter, April 22, 2024).

Asylum seekers who do arrive in Ciudad Juárez are now seeking to turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents at Gate 40 along the El Paso border wall on the bank of the Rio Grande. This is east of Gate 36, where Texas state police and National Guard have set up a large presence, with several coils of razor wire, to prevent asylum seekers from approaching federal authorities.

• Blanca Elizabeth Carmona, “Migrantes Llegan a Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua” (Milenio (Mexico), April 23, 2024).

A group of 141 migrants who had breached the Texas state barrier in El Paso on March 21 were indicted yesterday on misdemeanor rioting charges. The Texas state grand jury’s ruling came one day after a county judge had thrown out the charges, finding insufficient probable cause. The March 21 incident, showing migrants pushing past guardsmen to reach the border wall and Border Patrol agents, was caught on video and circulated widely on social media.

• “Migrants Indicted in Texas Over Alleged Border Breach After Judge Dismissed Charges” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 23, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, Tirza Ortiz, “Judge Finds No Probable Cause to Hold Migrants in County Jail on State Riot Charges” (Border Report, April 23, 2024).

El Paso’s police have applied for a $2.8 million state grant to help it combat the Venezuelan-originated “Tren de Aragua” criminal organization. “We haven’t had contact with that gang (in criminal cases), but that’s not to say they are not here in El Paso,” a police spokesman told the El Paso Times.

• Daniel Borunda, “Tren de Aragua: Venezuelan Gang Raises Concerns on el Paso, Juarez Border” (The El Paso Times, April 23, 2024).

So far this calendar year, Mexican authorities have deported 5,689 Guatemalan citizens by land and another 1,831 by air. U.S. authorities returned 22,887 Guatemalans.

• Cesar Perez Marroquin, “Calor Sofoca a Arizona y Migrantes Guatemaltecos Corren Riesgo de Muerte” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala), April 23, 2024).

A group of relatives of missing Central American migrants traveled to Tijuana to search for them. “It took more or less a year for them to add his file as a case for search in Mexico, because the communication from my country did not go through,” said the wife of a Guatemalan man whom she last heard from in Sonora in 2021.

• Khennia Reyes, “Buscan a Migrantes Centroamericanos Desaparecidos” (El Imparcial (Tijuana Mexico), April 23, 2024).

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it met with Mexico’s National Search Commission to seek improved exchange of forensic information about migrants who have gone missing in Mexico and Central America, especially fingerprints.

• “Cicr Urge a la Coordinacion Regional Atender Desaparicion de Migrantes” (Milenio (Mexico), April 23, 2024).

The Biden administration released the 771-page text of a final rule to govern the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

• “Kathleen Bush-Joseph @kathleenbushjo2 on Twitter” (Twitter, April 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A new data report from TRAC Immigration notes that U.S. immigration judges are ordering 50 percent more deportations now than in 2019, the peak year of the Trump administration. In the first half of fiscal year 2024, judges ordered 136,623 immigrants deported.

In 2019, 32 percent of migrants appearing in immigration court had attorneys; that has dropped to 15 percent this year.

38 percent of 2024’s rulings were asylum cases. Of those instances, only 21 percent were ordered removed; the rest received asylum or some other status allowing them to remain in the United States.

• “Top Places With the Most Immigrants Recently Ordered Deported” (TRAC Immigration, April 23, 2024).

An explainer from the National Immigration Forum dug into existing efforts and pending proposals to have USCIS asylum officers—not immigration judges—adjudicate more asylum cases for migrants who arrive at the border.

• Adjudication by Uscis Asylum Officers: Explainer (National Immigration Forum, Monday, April 22, 2024).

The Border Chronicle’s Melissa del Bosque interviewed Zachary Mueller of America’s Voice about the controversial and possibly illegal activities of “Border 911,” a pro-Trump group whose members include former top officials of Border Patrol, CBP, and ICE.

• Melissa del Bosque, “Border 911 and the Cruelty and Chaos Agenda” (The Border Chronicle, April 23, 2024).

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Developments

Panama’s government posted statistics showing that 110,008 people migrated through the Darién Gap during the first 3 months of 2024. That is 26 percent more migration than Panama measured during the first 3 months of 2023, a year in which 520,085 people ended up traveling through the Darién Gap.

22 percent of this year’s migrants were children. Of the adult population, 36 percent were women. 64 percent of this year’s total have been citizens of Venezuela, followed by Ecuador (8%), Haiti (7%), Colombia (6%), and China (6%).

The pace of migration has been unusually steady, averaging 1,161 migrants per day in January, 1,282 in February, and 1,188 in March. Last year, migration in the Darién jumped 55 percent from February to March.

• “Tránsito Irregular por Darién 2024“ (Panamá Migración, April 2024).

Between January 1 and April 16, Guatemalan authorities expelled 7,735 mostly U.S.-bound migrants into Honduras and 177 into El Salvador. In this respect, the new government of Bernardo Arévalo has made no changes to its predecessors’ approach to in-transit migration. Of this year’s expulsions, 77 percent have been citizens of Venezuela. Other frequently expelled nationalities include Colombia (9%), Ecuador (6%), and Haiti (2%). Guatemala’s expulsions included 44 citizens of China and 18 citizens of Turkey.

• Yesica Pena, “Migracion Ha Rechazado a Mas de 7,900 Extranjeros por Ingresar al Pais de Manera Irregular” (La Hora (Guatemala), April 22, 2024).

Some of the migrants whom Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) paid to have flown to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts in September 2022 have been granted “U” visas, a status for victims of crimes that are currently being investigated or prosecuted, the Miami Herald reported. A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts also found recently that the private contractor Florida hired to run the flight, Vertol Systems, may have “participated in a scheme to recruit vulnerable individuals through deceit so they could unwillingly and publicly be used as a prop in an extremely divisive national debate,”

• Ana Ceballos, “Some Migrants Flown by Desantis to Martha’s Vineyard Qualify for Victim Visas, Feds Say” (The Miami Herald, April 22, 2024).

Eight dead bodies abandoned along a highway near Chihuahua, the capital of Mexico’s northern border state of the same name, may be related to turf battles between migrant smuggling organizations in the area, Border Report reported.

• Julian Resendiz, “8 Dead in Fight for Control of Migrant Smuggling” (Border Report, April 22, 2024).

“Of Costa Rica’s 5.2 million inhabitants, one million are relatively recent migrants. Twenty percent of births are to Nicaraguan mothers and 20 percent of prisoners are of Nicaraguan origin,” said Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Arnoldo André Tinoco.

• “Canciller de Costa Rica: Con Nicaragua Tenemos “Magnifica” Relacion de Frontera Pero No en Derechos Humanos” (EFE, Confidencial (Nicaragua), April 22, 2024).

The independent Nicaraguan outlet Nicaragua Investiga reported on the two years of red tape and indifference that a family suffered as it tried to repatriate from Texas the remains of a young man who died of drowning in the Rio Grande in May 2022.

• “Familia Lucho Casi Dos Anos para Repatriar Cuerpo de Nicaraguense Fallecido en el Rio Bravo” (Nicaragua Investiga, April 22, 2024).

The jury was unable to agree on a verdict in the trial of Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly, who allegedly shot and killed Mexican migrant Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea on his property in January 2023. The judge in the case declared a mistrial.

• Anita Snow, “Arizona Judge Declares Mistrial in the Case of a Rancher Accused of Fatally Shooting a Migrant” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Speaking to analysts about migration patterns, a National Public Radio piece concluded that Mexico’s ongoing efforts to block migration will not reduce arrivals at the U.S. border for long, as flows into Mexico from the south remain robust.

• Sergio Martinez-Beltran, “Despite a Fortified Border, Migrants Will Keep Coming, Analysts Agree. Here’s Why.” (National Public Radio, April 22, 2024).

In a third in-depth report about U.S.-bound migration published in the past 10 days, the Honduran digital outlet ContraCorriente reported on the increasing diversity of nationalities of migrants taking the very risky journey through Mexico atop the “La Bestia” cargo train.

• Bryan Avelar, “Caminar Con la Mordida de ‘la Bestia’” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 22, 2024).

“The notion that there is a crisis caused by the border is fallacious,” economist James Gerber, author of the new book Border Economies: Cities Bridging the U.S.-Mexico Divide, told Sandra Dibble at Voice of San Diego. “There is a crisis in U.S. immigration policy, that’s the crisis. People are going to migrate and they’re going to migrate in bigger numbers over time because of the climate crisis. This is something that we need to learn how to manage better.”

• Sandra Dibble, “Border Report: The Tale of Twin Cities and Their Economies” (Voice of San Diego, April 22, 2024).

Even immigration restrictionist groups avoid using the term “invasion” to describe migration—as many Republican politicians are doing—because it is “inaccurate and incendiary,” reported Rafael Bernal at The Hill.

• Rafael Bernal, “Even Immigration Restrictionists Stay Away From Gop’s ‘Invasion’ Rhetoric” (The Hill, April 23, 2024).

“When we encounter someone fleeing starvation, political repression and threats to their life and liberty, we should see ourselves in them,” wrote Shmuly Yanklowitz, a rabbi who often works at the border in Arizona, in a Passover reflection published by the Chicago Tribune.

• Shmuly Yanklowitz, “The Border Crisis Demands Our Humanity. Passover Reminds Us How.” (The Chicago Tribune, April 23, 2024).

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Developments

Congressional Republicans’ effort to attach hardline border measures to Ukraine aid legislation formally ended on Saturday, when the House of Representatives approved a Ukraine and Israel aid bill with no border or migration content.

The GOP demand, issued last fall, spurred a months-long Senate negotiation process, yielding a deal that would have changed the law to, among other provisions, halt asylum access at the border when migration reached certain levels. That deal failed when Republican senators rejected it in early February.

In a gesture to border hardliners, House Republican leadership allowed a separate bill to come to a vote on Saturday that would have effectively shut down the right to seek asylum at the border. H.R. 3602, the “End the Border Catastrophe Act,” included most of the provisions of H.R. 2, a strict bill that the House passed in May 2023 without a single Democratic vote. Because it was rushed to the floor in suspension of the House’s rules, H.R. 3602 failed by a 215-199 vote on Saturday. Unlike H.R. 2, though, it got 5 Democratic “yes” votes.

• Jon Michael Raasch, “House Border Security Measure Spectacularly Fails, Democrats Tank Vote” (The Daily Mail (UK), April 20, 2024).

Border Patrol’s San Diego, California Sector experienced a weekly jump in migrant apprehensions and now firmly leads the Tucson, Arizona Sector as the apparent busiest region of the U.S.-Mexico border. While both sectors saw increases last week, San Diego reported 8,959 apprehensions during April 10-16 (28 percent more than the previous week) and Tucson reported 7,500 during April 12-18 (12 percent more than the previous week).

• Jeanette Quezada, “Large Group of Migrants, Including Children, Cross Us-Mexico Border Near San Ysidro” (NBC San Diego, April 19, 2024).
• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter” (Twitter, April 17, 2024).
• “John R. Modlin @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter” (Twitter, April 19, 2024).

An Albuquerque Journal report from New Mexico’s Cibola County Correctional Center noted an increase in the number of Venezuelan migrants being deported from the Center into Mexico.

• Austin Fisher, “Venezuelan Refugees Detained in Nm Fearful of More Deportations to Mexico” (The Albuquerque Journal, April 19, 2024).

Edixon Del Jesus Farias-Farias, a 26-year-old citizen of Venezuela and a detainee in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Conroe, Texas, died on April 18. “An autopsy is pending to determine the official cause of death,” reads an ICE release.

• “Venezuelan National Passes Away in Ice Custody” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), April 19, 2024).

Though licensed cannabis is now legal in New Mexico, Border Patrol continues to seize the drug, which remains illegal on the federal level, at the agency’s interior checkpoints in the state, the Associated Press reported. This “prompted a discussion this week” between Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

• Morgan Lee, “Cannabis Seizures at Checkpoints by Us-Mexico Border Frustrate State-Authorized Pot Industry” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 19, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A greater share of this year’s reduced population of migrants is coming to the border in states west of Texas. The Texas Tribune examined Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) claims that his state government’s hardline border policies are causing the westward shift, concluding that the reasons “are much more complicated” and that the trend is probably temporary.

• Naomi Choy Smith, Sumi Somaskanda, “Us Migrant Crisis Shifts From Texas to California Border” (BBC (UK), April 21, 2024).
• Alejandro Serrano, “Migrant Apprehensions Are Down at the Texas Border. Have State Policies Had an Impact?” (The Texas Tribune, April 22, 2024).

Gov. Abbott’s office reported busing 112,700 migrants to Democratic-governed cities since April 2022.

• “Operation Lone Star Combats Drug, Human Smuggling Across Border” (Texas Governor’s Office, April 19, 2024).

A significant cause of the border-wide decline is the Mexican government’s 2024 crackdown on migration transiting the country. However, “uneven enforcement and widespread corruption” ensure that Mexico rarely “blocks” migrants: its actions “make migrants’ journey north riskier, costlier, and slower,” Christine Murray reported at the Financial Times.

• Christine Murray, “How Mexico’s ‘Kabuki Pantomime’ Fails to Stop Us-Bound Migrants” (Financial Times (UK), April 21, 2024).

Despite rhetoric about terrorists potentially crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, “since 1975, the annual likelihood of an American being murdered in a foreigner-committed terrorist attack is about one in 4.5 million,” recalled the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh.

• Alex Nowrasteh, “The Manufactured Crisis of Migrant Terrorists at the Border” (Cato Institute, Reason, April 19, 2024).

Ecuadorian migrants transiting Mexico who spoke to Agénce France Presse said that they were nervous about identifying themselves to Mexican authorities as citizens of Ecuador, two weeks after Ecuador’s government raided the Mexican embassy in Quito, triggering a breakdown in diplomatic relations.

• “Migrantes Temen Que Ruptura de Relaciones Complique su Camino a Eu” (Agence France Presse, Milenio (Mexico), April 19, 2024).

While most of the thousands of migrants per week transiting Honduras pass through the country quickly, some need to stay and seek temporary work, medical assistance, and shelter, the Honduran online outlet ContraCorriente reported. While some formal shelters and humanitarian aid exist, many migrants rely on informal shelters provided by local citizens or stay in rented rooms in private homes.

• Daniel Fonseca, “Un Lugar para Refugiarse en el Camino” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 19, 2024).

“The next administration in Mexico will inherit an incomplete and deficient action plan to deal with migration” from Central America, wrote Brenda Estefan of IPADE Business School at Americas Quarterly, calling for a renewed and more collaborative focus on “root causes” of migration after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves office at the end of the year.

• Brenda Estefan, “Mexico Needs a New Strategy for the Northern Triangle” (IPADE Business School, Americas Quarterly, April 22, 2024).

Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania) penned a column endorsing the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that includes border and migration provisions that reflect some priorities of border hardliners and some priorities of migrant rights defenders.

• Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania), “It’s Time to Do Something About the Southern Border” (The Morning Call, April 20, 2024).

On the Right

• Adam Shaw, “Border State Lawmaker Sounds Alarm on Bloodthirsty Venezuelan Gang Entering Us: ‘They Have No Rules’” (Fox News, April 19, 2024).

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Developments

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) yesterday returned a planeload of 52 Haitian citizens to their country, even though governance has collapsed and violence is rampant there. The plane landed in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien because the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is too unsafe.

During the first six months of fiscal 2024, Haiti was the number-fifteen nationality of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry, well behind even China, India, and Turkey. 97 percent of Haitians seeking protection at the border in 2024 have instead reported to ports of entry, in nearly all cases using the CBP One smartphone app.

“Just where are these deportees supposed to go?” William O’Neill, the UN independent human rights expert on Haiti, asked the Miami Herald. “I would just ask the United States and all countries to halt immediately all deportations to a country that cannot guarantee anyone’s security, where 1.5 million people are facing famine and where embassies are evacuating most of their personnel.”

In March, a letter from 481 organizations (including WOLA) had urged the Biden administration to suspend deportation flights to Haiti.

• Jacqueline Charles, “Biden Administration Resumes Deportation Flights to Haiti Amid Ongoing Violence” (The Miami Herald, April 18, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, “U.S. Restarts Deportation Flights to Haiti” (The New York Times, April 18, 2024).
• Gloria Oladipo, Luke Taylor, “Us Resumes Deportation Flights to Haiti Despite Continuing Bloodshed” (The Guardian (Uk), April 18, 2024).
• Jillian Kestler-D’amours, “‘Unconscionable’: Us Sends Dozens to Haiti on Deportation Flight” (Al Jazeera, April 18, 2024).

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) alerted that its personnel in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras saw more cases of sexual violence against migrants during the first quarter of 2024 (over 250) than they did in all of 2023 (232). Most cases occurred in Mexico’s organized crime-influenced U.S. border state of Tamaulipas.

MSF reported in March that it had counted 676 cases of sexual violence in the Darién Gap in 2023, and another 120 in January 2024. Shortly afterward, Panama’s government suspended the organization’s operations in the country.

• Enric Sitja Rusinol, “Msf Mexico Reporta Mas Violencia Sexual Hacia Migrantes en 2024” (EFE, EFE, April 18, 2024).

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Communications Luis Miranda said that the average wait for a CBP One appointment right now is about 10 weeks. This contrasts with recent reports of appointments routinely taking six or even eight months at some border crossings.

• Arturo Sanchez Jimenez, “Conseguir una Cita Con Cbp One Tarda unas 10 Semanas, Asegura Funcionario de Eu” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 18, 2024).

“I am concerned that hate, bigotry and xenophobia are clouding our potential to prosper together,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, wrote in a Dallas Morning News column directed at Texas state authorities. Bárcena is currently visiting Texas border cities.

• Alicia Barcena, “Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary: State Law Jeopardizes Cooperation With Texas” (The Dallas Morning News, April 18, 2024).
• “Mi Prioridad Es Proteger y Empoderar a la Comunidad Mexicana en Texas: Alicia Barcena” (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexico), April 18, 2024).

Interviewed by CBS News, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister said that his government would be willing to accept more than the current tempo of one U.S. deportation flight per month.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Top Cuban Official Says Country Open to More U.S. Deportations, Blames Embargo for Migrant Exodus” (CBS News, April 18, 2024).

Colombia has fallen behind on regularizing the status of Venezuelan migrants who arrive without passports, and this is incentivizing many Venezuelans to migrate to the United States, reported Manuel Rueda at PRX’s The World.

• Manuel Rueda, “‘I’ll go for the American dream’: After struggling to get legal status in Colombia, many Venezuelan migrants are heading to the US” (The World, April 18, 2024).

Two South Texas legislators, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D) and Rep. Monica de la Cruz (R), alleged that Catholic Charities of San Antonio misused federal funding by paying for released migrants’ airfare to destination cities in the U.S. interior.

• Sandra Sanchez, “San Antonio Nonprofit ‘Misused’ Federal Funds to Buy Migrants Airline Tickets, Lawmakers Say” (Border Report, April 18, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Reporting from San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, a border city near Yuma, Arizona, the BBC’s Linda Pressly focused on the powerful criminal organizations increasingly extorting and kidnapping migrants there. “These extortionists and hostage-takers are not only professional criminals—some are also law enforcement,” Pressly noted.

• Linda Pressly, “Extortion and Kidnap – a Deadly Journey Across Mexico” (BBC (UK), April 18, 2024).

Ariel Ruiz Soto of the Migration Policy Institute told the Voice of America that “root causes” strategies have their limits: “For example, if Microsoft wanted to set up a hub in Guatemala, they would need not only to include money to build the building, to hire workers, provide training, but also a counterpart allocation from the Guatemalan government to build the roads, to have the infrastructure for the electricity, to have broadband internet.”

• Aline Barros, “White House Says Plans to Address Causes of Migration Show Results” (Voice of America, April 18, 2024).

“A vast enforcement crackdown is likely to harm economic opportunity in the United States,” reads a column from the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ Michael Clemens, author of a new statistical study of how the availability of lawful pathways reduces unlawful border crossings. “A rational way out of this crisis would be to set up a system expanding legal access for immigrants to the United States while retaining some categories as unlawful.”

• Michael A. Clemens, “Offering More Lawful Pathways for Us Border Crossings Reduces Unlawful Crossings” (Peterson Institute for International Economics, April 18, 2024).

On the Right

• “Texas Border Operation Captures Half a Million Illegal Immigrants, Thousands of Felons” (Judicial Watch, April 18, 2024).

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Developments

The San Diego, California Border Patrol sector may now be the number one destination for migrants coming to the border, according to a read of weekly data posted by Border Patrol sector chiefs. San Diego saw the most migration during much of the 1990s but has been surpassed by other parts of the border over the past quarter-century.

An increase in migrant arrivals there—8,959 Border Patrol apprehensions between April 10 and 16—had overwhelmed San Diego county efforts to receive released migrants, resulting in 24,000 CBP “street releases ” in San Diego since federal funding ran out in February. San Diego County has received $19.6 million in federal funding from the 2024 budget that Congress approved in March, but has not yet restarted migrant reception services, Border Report found.

• Adam Isacson @adam_wola on Twitter (Twitter, April 17, 2024).
• Salvador Rivera, “Federal Money in Hand, County of San Diego Yet to Commit Millions for Migrant Welcome Center” (Border Report, April 17, 2024).

In an effort to pacify conservatives angry that an Ukraine aid bill is headed to a vote this weekend, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) introduced a new hard-line border bill. H.R. 3602, currently on the Rules Committee’s docket, includes most of the provisions of H.R. 2, which passed the House on a party-line vote in May 2023. Among other provisions, H.R. 2 would make it virtually impossible to access the U.S. asylum system at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill might come to a vote this week—or it may die a quiet death, as Republican hardliners are unhappy with the process.

• Mychael Schnell, Rebecca Beitsch, “House Gop Unveils Border Bill as Conservatives Slam Foreign Aid Measures” (The Hill, April 17, 2024).

As expected, the U.S. Senate voted to dismiss the House of Representatives’ effort to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The impeachment—spearheaded by House Republicans who oppose Mayorkas’s management of the border and migration—will not go to a Senate trial.

The dismissal passed by a 51-49 party-line vote in the Democratic-majority Senate. The most moderate Republicans voted to impeach, while the most conservative Democrats (or independents who caucus with Democrats) voted to dismiss.

• Jacqueline Alemany, Liz Goodwin, “Senate Votes to Dismiss Impeachment Charges Against Mayorkas” (The Washington Post, April 17, 2024).
• Rebecca Beitsch, “Gop Effort to Make Mayorkas Face of Border Runs Into Senate Dead-End” (The Hill, April 17, 2024).
• Anna Giaritelli, David Sivak, “Schumer Succeeds in Killing Off Mayorkas Impeachment Trial Before It Can Begin” (The Washington Examiner, April 17, 2024).
• Li Zhou, “The Very Short Mayorkas Impeachment Trial, Explained” (Vox, April 17, 2024).
• Aaron Blake, “The Politics of the Swiftly Dismissed Mayorkas Impeachment Trial” (The Washington Post, April 17, 2024).

More than 20 migrants, about half from Ecuador, were kidnapped by criminals in Ciudad Juárez last week after flying to the city. The criminals reportedly released five of them for a ransom of $8,000 each.

• Julian Resendiz, “Group Reports Mass Kidnapping of Ecuadorian Migrants in Juarez” (Border Report, April 17, 2024).

Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena is on a tour of Texas border cities, visiting consulates to help them prepare for—and to send a strong message of opposition to—Texas’s S.B. 4 state immigration law. The controversial measure is currently suspended as federal courts consider appeals.

Bárcena reiterated that Mexico will not accept any deportations, including of Mexican citizens, carried out by Texas state—not federal—authorities.

• “La Canciller Alicia Barcena Inicia Gira de Trabajo en Chihuahua y Texas” (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexico), April 17, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “Mexico Offers Assistance to Texas Residents Against ‘Anti-Immigrant’ sb4” (Border Report, April 17, 2024).
• “Mexico’s Foreign Secretary, el Paso Leaders Talk Immigration and Healing at Border Visit” (CBS 4 El Paso, April 17, 2024).

In the Darién Gap, Colombia reports capturing “98 members of different criminal organizations between August 7, 2022 and March 12, 2024,” reads an item at the U.S. Southern Command’s Diálogo website. The document does not state whether any of those captured held positions of importance in criminal organizations, as opposed to low-level figures.

• “Panama, Colombia, Us, Allies Against Transnational Crime” (Dialogo (U.S. Southern Command), April 18, 2024).

A new update from the UN Refugee Agency noted that since September, Honduras has measured more in-transit migration than Panama has. “This trend is explained by air transit to Nicaragua, which allows people coming mainly from Haiti, Cuba, Guinea, and other extra-continental nationalities to subsequently take the route through Honduras without passing through the Darién. In addition, there is maritime transit from Colombia to Nicaragua.”

• “Honduras – Reporte del Equipo Local de Frontera Suroriente – 1 al 31 de Marzo 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, April 17, 2024).

Monday is the deadline for public comment on CBP’s plan to install 25 miles of stadium-style bright lighting along the Rio Grande in west and south Texas. As the proposed lighting is “a major stressor to wildlife” and creates light pollution, the plan alarms environmental defenders.

• Mary Cantrell, “New Border Lighting Initiatives Prompt Concern Over Dark Skies, Environment” (The Big Bend Sentinel, April 17, 2024).
• Sandra Sanchez, “Cbp Seeks Input on Plan to Light Up 25 Miles of South and West Texas Borderlands” (Border Report, April 17, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A new WOLA analysis looks at the sharp drop in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border so far in 2024. Rather than U.S. policy changes or the Texas government’s crackdown, the main reason appears to be Mexico’s stepped-up interdiction of migrants, at U.S. urging. These efforts may falter as flows of new migrants into Mexico remain robust; if that happens and migration increases, the Biden administration will likely consider means to “shut down” asylum access. Those steps, too, would only have a short-term impact, the study concludes.

• Adam Isacson, “Why Is Migration Declining at the U.S.-Mexico Border in Early 2024?” (Washington Office on Latin America, April 18, 2024).

The Guardian examined the leading candidate in Panama’s presidential elections’ unrealistic vow to “close” the Darién Gap to migration.

• Thomas Graham, “Panama’s Presidential Frontrunner Vows to ‘Close’ Darien Gap” (The Guardian (Uk), April 18, 2024).

A report from Jesuit Refugee Service USA and the Boston College School of Social Work looked at how digital tools are changing the migration experience, from the spread of misinformation to the challenges of using the CBP One app.

• “Navigating the Us-Mexico Border: Digital Practices of Migrants and Their Psychosocial Needs” (Boston College School of Social Work, JRS USA, Jesuit Refugee Service USA, April 17, 2024).

On the Right

• Khaleda Rahman, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Demands Space Lasers to Combat Migrants” (Newsweek, April 18, 2024).

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Developments

The populist candidate leading polls for Panama’s May 5 presidential elections is promising to block migration through the Darién Gap. “We are going to close Darien and we are going to repatriate all these people as appropriate, respecting human rights,” José Raúl Mulino told reporters. Mulino did not specify how he would manage to close to migrants a 2,200-square-mile region of dense jungle.

• “Candidato Presidencial en Panama Promete “Cerrar” Selva del Darien” (Agence France Presse, Milenio (Mexico), April 16, 2024).

Leaders of the Republican-majority House of Representatives formally delivered articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Democratic-majority Senate, more than two months after approving them by a single vote on their second attempt. The Republican legislators contend that Mayorkas’s management of the border and migration is grounds for impeachment; Senate Democratic leaders are likely to introduce a motion to dismiss the case without going to trial, and they appear to have the votes.

• Annie Grayer, Priscilla Alvarez, “House Sends Mayorkas Impeachment Articles to the Senate” (CNN, April 16, 2024).
• Anna Giaritelli, “House Delivers Mayorkas Impeachment Articles to Divided Senate” (The Washington Examiner, April 16, 2024).

Mayorkas testified yesterday in the House Homeland Security Committee, which originated his impeachment process last year. “With the authorities and the funding that we have, it [the border] is as secure as it can be,” Mayorkas told a Republican questioner.

Mayorkas said he did not recall telling Border Patrol agents that “higher than 85 percent” of encountered migrants were being released into the United States. (Judging from CBP custody statistics, more than 70 percent of encountered migrants received “notices to appear” during the first six months of fiscal 2024.)

• Josh Christenson, “Mayorkas Tells Congress Border ‘as Secure as It Can Be,’ Cannot ‘Recall’ Saying 85% of Migrants Are Released Into Us” (The New York Post, April 16, 2024).

At the hearing, Republican legislators presented a flier, first promoted on Twitter by the Heritage Foundation, supposedly produced by a Jewish immigrant aid organization in Texas. The document, which urges migrants to vote for Joe Biden in November, is an obvious fake.

• “Fabricated Flier a New Low in Congressional Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Democratic Conspiracy Narrative” (Americas Voice, April 16, 2024).

Brazilian fishermen discovered the remains of nine people in a boat drifting off the coast of the country’s northeast on Saturday. They appear to have been migrants from Africa, probably Mali and Mauritania.

• Renata Brito, “9 Bodies Found Adrift in a Boat Off Brazil Were Likely Migrants From Mauritania and Mali, Police Say” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 16, 2024).

A Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 35 north of Laredo, Texas is receiving $15 million in upgrades that will make it the largest interior road checkpoint in the United States, Border Report reported.

• Sandra Sanchez, “‘Checkpoint Charley’ Expansion Will Make It the Largest in Us” (Border Report, April 16, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

“Realistically speaking, having this [Biden administration] asylum ban applied to 100 percent could mean only a few hundred people more a month being ordered removed. Not a huge shift,” pointed out the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in a factually dense interview with the Border Chronicle’s Melissa del Bosque.

• Melissa del Bosque, “Can President Biden Really Shut Down Asylum at the Border? A Q&A With Immigration Expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick” (The Border Chronicle, April 16, 2024).

A Bloomberg analysis examined the drift of the Biden administration’s border and migration policies, noting inconsistencies and failures to anticipate new challenges. “The first year of Biden’s term felt like it was a series of good plans getting halted, with frequent leadership changes on the issue,” a former official noted.

• Eric Martin, Maya Averbuch, Patricia Laya, “Biden Once Rejected Trump’s Migrant Policies. Now His Ideas Echo Them” (Bloomberg, Yahoo, April 16, 2024).

On the Right

• Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), “Mayorkas Must Be Held Accountable at His Senate Trial” (The American Conservative, April 17, 2024).
• Maryann Martinez, “Over 100 Migrants Caught Scaling, Cutting Border Fence Near School” (The Daily Mail (UK), April 16, 2024).

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Developments

An Indiana National Guardsman in El Paso, part of the Texas state government’s “Operation Lone Star” troop deployment, shot his weapon at a migrant who had allegedly stabbed two people on Sunday afternoon.

The incident occurred along the edge of the Rio Grande. The alleged stabbing took place on the U.S. side of the river, which is very narrow in El Paso; the attacker ran back into Mexico. Two migrants were treated for “superficial wounds.”

There is little other information. The Texas Military Department confirmed that a guardsman “discharged a weapon in a border-related incident.”

This is the second time that guardsmen have fired on a migrant allegedly wielding a knife. In August 2023, a Texas National Guardsman stationed near the El Paso side of the Paso del Norte bridge fired a shot into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, wounding the leg of a Mexican man on the opposite riverbank. The shooting occurred “after three men on the Mexican side of the border started attacking a group of migrants with a knife as the migrants attempted to cross the river,” the Washington Post reported at the time, citing a CBP official’s account.

• Ali Bradley, “Stabbing Adds to Increased Violence in el Paso Sector” (NewsNation, April 15, 2024).
• Fernie Ortiz, “National Guard Member Shoots Migrant Seen Stabbing Another, Document Shows” (Border Report, April 15, 2024).
• Jake Allen, “Reports: Migrant Shot by Indiana National Guard Soldier at Southern Border” (The Indianapolis Star, April 15, 2024).
• Aaron Martinez, “Border Shooting Involving Indiana National Guard Troop in el Paso Under Investigation” (The El Paso Times, April 15, 2024).

In Nogales, Sonora, asylum seekers’ waits for CBP One appointments now often last seven or eight months, reports Christina Ascencio of Human Rights First. The Nogales port of entry, the only CBP One destination between Calexico, California and El Paso, Texas, offers only 100 appointments per day.

• “Christina Asencio @christielaine23 on Twitter” (Twitter, April 15, 2024).

Texas’s state government has begun construction of a segment of state-funded border wall near the Rio Grande in Zapata county, on private land whose owner approved of it, Border Report reported. It is the first state border wall to go up in south Texas.

• Sandra Sanchez, “1st Segment of Texas-Funded Border Wall in Zapata County Is Going Up” (Border Report, April 15, 2024).

The House of Representatives’ Republican majority is expected to send its impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Democratic-majority Senate today. The measure, which passed the House by a single vote in February on a second attempt, is not expected to get a high-profile reception in the Senate.

“Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer is expected to quickly bring an end to the matter, which Democrats say is a politically motivated misuse of the impeachment process,” Reuters reported. Republicans allege that Mayorkas’s management of the border and migration constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors”; the Senate is certain not to convict, and even an actual trial is looking unlikely.

• Richard Cowan, “Us Senate Seen Swiftly Ending Impeachment of Biden’s Top Border Official” (Reuters, Reuters, April 16, 2024).

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the “customs enforcement” arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is launching an effort this week to build a separate identity from ICE, an agency more frequently associated with arresting and deporting migrants from the U.S. interior. “The makeover partly aims to appease senior HSI agents who have sought a breakaway because so many major U.S. cities have adopted policies limiting cooperation with ICE,” reported the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff.

The 2022 Homeland Security Act lashed HSI together with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) branch, which detains and deports migrants. While it would take an act of law to separate HSI from ICE, agents will henceforth carry a separate badge, and “independent branding” will de-emphasize the ICE affiliation.

• Nick Miroff, “Homeland Security Investigative Agency Seeks Rebrand, Without Ice” (The Washington Post, April 15, 2024).

Six moderate Democratic House members, led by Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who represents a New Mexico border district, introduced a resolution last week “Condemning Republican inaction to address comprehensive immigration reform and border security.”

• Susan Dunlap, “Vasquez Calls Out Republicans for ‘Inaction’ on Border Policy” (NM Political Report, April 16, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “Democrats Return Favor, Blame Gop for Border Crisis” (Border Report, April 15, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The UN Refugee Agency published an update about Darién Gap migration, with the results of 109 interviews with migrants. 20 percent of them, it turns out, do not have the United States as their intended destination. 70 percent of respondents were Venezuelan, but only 44 percent of those came directly from Venezuela—the rest had already left their native country and had been living elsewhere in South America.

• “Mixed Movements Official Data Darien Province, Panama-Colombia Border” (UN Refugee Agency, April 16, 2024).

UNHCR also released a report summarizing its surveys of migrants transiting Guatemala in 2023. It found 42 percent of them were leaving their countries for reasons of “violence or conflict,” with 72 percent of Ecuadorian people giving that response. 65 percent said that they had suffered mistreatment or abuse on their journey, usually robberies, extortions, fraud, or threats.

• “Acnur Guatemala – Monitoreo de Movimientos Mixtos. Informe Anual 2023” (UN Refugee Agency, April 15, 2024).

On the Right

• Bethany Blankley, “Majority of Voters Polled Believe U.S. Is Being Invaded at Southern Border” (The Center Square, April 15, 2024).
• Matthew Tragesser, “Threat From China Is Growing at Our Southern Border” (The Heritage Foundation, April 15, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Californians Are Buying Up Guns After Border Patrol Starts Dumping Thousands of Migrants on Streets” (The New York Post, April 15, 2024).

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Developments

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data late Friday about migration and border security metrics at the U.S.-Mexico border in March. CBP’s Border Patrol component reported apprehending 137,480 people at the border last month, down 2.3 percent from February (140,638). Migration usually increases in spring; this is only the second time this century that apprehensions declined from February to March.

• March was the seventh-lightest month of the Biden administration’s thirty-eight months in office.
• The top three nationalities of Border Patrol’s apprehensions in March were Mexico (38%), Ecuador (11%), and Guatemala (11%).
• The top three nationalities of Border Patrol’s apprehensions during the first six months of fiscal 2024 are Mexico (30%), Guatemala (14%), and Venezuela (11%).
• 33 percent of March Border Patrol apprehensions were of members of family units. 6 percent were unaccompanied children. The remaining 61 percent were single adults.
• 39 percent of Border Patrol apprehensions during the first 6 months of fiscal 2024 were members of family units. 6 percent were unaccompanied children. The remaining 55 percent were single adults.
• The top three sectors where Border Patrol apprehended migrants in March were Tucson Arizona (31%), San Diego, California (25%), and El Paso, Texas-New Mexico (22%).
• The top three sectors where Border Patrol apprehended migrants in the first six months of fiscal 2024 were Tucson Arizona (33%), Del Rio, Texas (19%), and San Diego, California (18%).
• CBP encountered another 51,892 people at land-border ports of entry in March, about 44,000 (85%) of them with CBP One appointments. That is similar to recent months. The top nationalities at the ports were Mexico (27%), Cuba (24%), and Haiti (18%).
• The total number of migrant encounters in March was 189,372, combining Border Patrol apprehensions and port of entry arrivals.

• “Cbp Releases March 2024 Monthly Update” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, April 12, 2024).
• “US Border Arrests Fall in March, Bucking Seasonal Trends Amid Increased Enforcement in Mexico” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 12, 2024).

Migration continues to decline in April. Border Patrol has averaged 3,800 apprehensions per day over the past three weeks, Rep. Henry Cuéllar (D-Texas), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, said at a hearing last week reported in the Washington Examiner. That would set April on pace to be the third-lightest month of the Biden administration’s 39 full months.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Border Arrests Dropping Sharply, House Lawmaker Says” (The Washington Examiner, April 12, 2024).

As migration declines in Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona Sector, which has been the number-one sector since last July, the San Diego, California Sector may be surpassing it. Weekly tweets from Border Patrol sector chiefs showed more migrant apprehensions in San Diego April 3-9 (6,997) than in Tucson April 5-11 (6,700). San Diego has not been the busiest Border Patrol sector in any month during the 21st century.

• Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter (Twitter, April 10, 2024).
• John R. Modlin @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter (Twitter, April 12, 2024).

Much of the decrease in migration at the border so far this year is the result of Mexican security and migration forces’ stepped-up migrant interdiction operations, including a record 120,000 migrant apprehensions in each of January and February. CNN reported on one example: greatly increased Mexican Army and National Guard patrols along the borderline east of San Diego, especially south of Jacumba Springs, California, where many asylum seekers had been turning themselves in to Border Patrol.

• David Culver, Evelio Contreras, Norma Galeana, Rachel Clarke, “These Are the Border Officers That Migrants Fear – and They Are Not the Americans” (CNN, April 12, 2024).

A migrant encampment near railroad tracks in Chihuahua, the capital of the Mexican border state of the same name, has grown to about 600 people, La Jornada reported. Chihuahua is more than 200 miles south of the state’s largest border city, Ciudad Juárez. The buildup at the encampment is a result of Mexican forces’ operations to prevent migrants from boarding railroad freight cars. NGOs cited by La Jornada “pointed out that the INM [Mexican government National Migration Institute] operations began last April 1, in Ciudad Juárez, and extended to the south of the state, registering dozens of aggressions against people in conditions of mobility.”

• Jesus Estrada, “La Jornada: Ante Redadas del Inm, Crece Campamento Improvisado” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 14, 2024).

The Biden administration has not yet taken legally dubious executive action to restrict the right to asylum at the border because it “has been trying to find the right language to impose a crackdown without getting instantly shut down by courts—or facing an open revolt by his progressive base,” reads an Axios report, following up on an April 10 “scoop.” An executive order is “now expected within weeks,” Axios added.

• Hans Nichols, Stef W. Kight, “Inside Biden’s Delay on Going “Nuclear” at the Border” (Axios, April 15, 2024).

The Washington Examiner reported that 464,922 unaccompanied children entered U.S. custody at the border during the Biden administration as of January 31 (the number through March 31 is 481,534). Conservatives interviewed blamed the large number on U.S. laws written to protect children who arrive at the border without parents, which mandate that they get due process for protection needs instead of being quickly deported.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Biden’s Border Sees Nearly Half a Million Immigrant Children Arrive Without a Parent” (The Washington Examiner, April 13, 2024).

The government of Colombia (population 52 million) estimated that 2,857,528 migrants from Venezuela were living in the country as of January 31. 47 percent of them are living in five cities (Bogotá, Medellín, Cúcuta, Barranquilla, and Cali). More than 2 million now have Temporary Protection Permits (PPT), notes a report from Bogotá‘s Universidad del Rosario.

• Ronal F. Rodriguez, “La Integracion Migratoria una Oportunidad para el Desarrollo Socioeconomico de los Territorios” (La Silla Vacia (Colombia), April 15, 2024).

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will testify twice this week about the Department’s 2025 budget request. On Tuesday, the Secretary will appear before the Homeland Security Committee in the Republican-majority House of Representatives—the committee that launched impeachment proceedings against him. On Thursday, Mayorkas will testify in the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Last week, he testified in both houses’ appropriations committees.

• 10:00-1:00 in Room 310, Cannon House Office Building: Hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee about A Review of the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the Department of Homeland Security.
• 10:00 in Room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building: Hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on The FY25 Dhs Budget: Resources and Authorities Requested to Protect and Secure the Homeland.

Analyses and Feature Stories

A Washington Post feature reported on the sharp rise in migrant deaths, especially by drowning in the Rio Grande, in Maverick County, Texas, which includes Eagle Pass. Local authorities cannot keep up with the need for body bags, burial plots, and DNA collection capabilities. Bodies often get buried without being identified.

• Arelis R. Hernandez, Daniele Volpe, Marina Dias, “Texas County at Center of Border Fight Is Overwhelmed by Migrant Deaths” (The Washington Post, April 14, 2024).

The migrant population in Mexico City is swelling, as Mexico’s 2024 crackdown is forcing more people to wait in the capital and arrange their documentation and CBP One appointments, reported David Agren at OSV News. At least 2,500 migrants are waiting in the capital, most of them in six tent encampments.

• David Agren, “Mexico City Is ‘Waiting Room’ for Migrants as They Sort Out Legal Situation Before Heading to Border” (OSV News, Catholic Review, April 14, 2024).

Initium Media, a Chinese-language publication, told the story of eight Chinese migrants’ late March death by drowning while trying to migrate along the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. The group had chosen the maritime route in an effort to elide the many checkpoints that authorities place along the highway through Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state.

• Beimeng Fu, Zhaoyin Feng, “Chinese Migrant in New York Reveals Details About the Deadly Route That Took the Lives of Eight Chinese in Mexico” (Initium Media, Documented, April 15, 2024).

Allan Bu of the Honduras-based outlet ContraCorriente traveled to the Arizona-Sonora border and reported on migrants arriving and non-governmental humanitarian workers operating under conditions of difficult terrain and xenophobic backlash.

• Allan Bu, “Tacos y Tortillas Con Quesillo para los Migrantes Cerca del Muro de Trump” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 13, 2024).