Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: December 15, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

With more input from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a small group of senators continues to negotiate a deal that might water down the right to seek asylum at the border, a Republican demand for passage of a $110.5 billion Biden administration request for Ukraine and Israel aid, the border, and other priorities. Migrant rights defenders are alarmed by reports that the administration and Democratic legislators might agree to a provision that would expel asylum seekers, Title 42-style, if daily Border Patrol apprehensions exceed a certain threshold. Congress was set to adjourn on December 14; the House gaveled out, but the Senate remains in session in order to give negotiators more time.

With nearly 10,000 Border Patrol migrant apprehensions per day, December 1-7 was one of the busiest weeks ever at the U.S.-Mexico border. Arrivals of asylum seekers are heaviest in Border Patrol’s Tucson, Del Rio, and San Diego sectors, where Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has partially or fully closed three ports of entry. More recent data point to a modest slowdown in migrant arrivals compared to the first week of the month. So do reports of reduced, though still historically high, levels of northbound migration through Honduras and Panama.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: December 8, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Legislators have hit an impasse over the Biden administration’s request for $110.5 billion in additional funding for Ukraine, Israel, the border, and other priorities. In exchange for their support, Republicans are demanding tougher border and migration measures, including some that could put asylum and humanitarian parole out of reach for many. Talks between a small group of senators have broken down, a “test vote” in the full Senate failed, and the tone is acrimonious.

Border Patrol apprehended more than 10,000 migrants on December 5, one of the highest daily counts ever. A September-to-October dip in migrant arrivals has reversed. Large groups are waiting, at times for days in poor humanitarian conditions, in Border Patrol’s sectors in Tucson, Arizona; Del Rio, Texas; and San Diego, California.

U.S. authorities encountered over 28,000 citizens of China at the U.S.-Mexico border over the 12 months ending in October, a more than tenfold increase over the previous 12 months, with more than 8,000 arriving in September and October. Most are coming to San Diego. People who flee China tend to be middle class or lower middle class. They are escaping persecution but also cite fears of falling into poverty as the world’s second-largest economy falters.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: December 4, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

This week’s update is late because, as we approached our regular publication deadline, staff were testifying in the House of Representatives. The next update will resume, as normal, on Friday (December 8).

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

A group of six or seven senators is negotiating Republican demands for tighter border and migration measures in exchange for aid to Ukraine, Israel and more in a Biden administration request for additional 2024 funds. The senators may be close to requiring asylum seekers to meet a much higher standard of fear in initial interviews at the border, a possibility that has progressive members of Congress and migrants’ rights advocates, including WOLA, on edge. Republicans are also demanding Democratic concessions on “safe third country” agreements and the presidential humanitarian parole authority.

Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico, experienced a very sharp increase in the number of migrant remains recovered during fiscal 2023. The agency reported that 15 people died by drowning in the Rio Grande in its Del Rio, Texas Sector between October 1 and November 20. Medical providers in San Diego report a sharp increase in deaths and serious injuries from falls off of the border wall. On the Mexican side of the border, a mass kidnapping in Tamaulipas and cartel battles in Sonora underscored the dangers migrants face in the border zone.

The federal judiciary’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Texas to remove the “buoy wall” that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had ordered built in the middle of the Rio Grande in June near Eagle Pass. Abbott said he would appeal to the Supreme Court. A Fifth Circuit district court also blocked a Texas state government suit seeking to prohibit Border Patrol agents from cutting through the razor-sharp concertina wire that Texas authorities have strung along the river’s banks, in an effort to block asylum seekers.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Hearing Testimonies from Yesterday

Here are links to the testimonies I submitted for yesterday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the U.S.-Mexico border and migration.

WOLA has created a page with video excerpts and links.

I’m now catching up on work that has fallen behind, including this week’s delayed Border Update. Testifying in the full committee was a great experience, but it did poke a 20-hour hole in the week.

U.S.-Mexico Border Update: November 17, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

For the first time since May to June, the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border declined from September to October. The main reason was a drop in migration of citizens of Venezuela, a likely “wait and see” reaction after the Biden administration, on October 5, announced a resumption of deportation flights to Caracas. Other trends included a rise in arrivals of Mexican families and a general westward shift in migrants’ destinations, with Arizona a particular focus.

Migration also declined in Panama’s Darién Gap region in October, led by a drop in Venezuelan citizens transiting the perilous jungle route. Migration through Honduras, however, jumped to over 100,000 people in October. The reason is an increase in aerial routes to Nicaragua, which does not require visas of most countries’ visiting citizens.

The state legislature of Texas, which is dominated by a Republican Party strongly critical of the Biden administration’s border policies, added the latest in a series of hardline measures: a law that would make it a state crime to cross the border irregularly from Mexico. The law raises questions about Mexico’s willingness to take back migrants expelled by Texas, the constitutionality of a state enforcing immigration laws, and a possible increase in racial profiling that today’s more conservative Supreme Court might uphold.

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At WOLA: U.S. Congress Must Not Gut the Right to Asylum at a Time of Historic Need

Republican legislators have dug in and have given the Biden administration a list of demands. Aid for Ukraine and other items in the White House’s supplemental budget request will not get their approval, they say, unless the law is changed in ways that all but eliminate the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Here, at WOLA’s site, is an analysis of this proposal and the unspeakable harm that it would do. We urge the administration and congressional Democrats to stand strong and reject it.

From the conclusion:

If the Senate Republicans’ November 6 proposal were to become law, it would deny asylum to almost all protection-seeking migrants, unless:

  • That migrant sought asylum and received rejections in every country through which they passed en route to the United States.
  • That migrant presented at a land-border port of entry (official border crossing), even though CBP strictly limits asylum seekers’ access to these facilities.
  • The U.S. government could not send that migrant to a third country to seek asylum there.
  • In an initial “credible fear” interview within days of apprehension, that migrant met a higher screening standard.

If an asylum seeker clears those hurdles, the Republican proposal would require them to await their court hearings in ICE detention—even if they are a parent with children—or while “remaining in Mexico.”

This proposal is extraordinarily radical. Congressional Republicans’ demands to attach it to 2024 spending put the Biden administration in a tough position. It is a terrible choice to have to secure funding for Ukraine and other priorities by ending the United States’ historic role as a country of refuge, breaking international commitments dating back to the years after World War II.

Read the whole thing here.

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: November 10, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The U.S. Congress is considering the 2024 federal budget and a supplemental budget request for Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and the U.S.-Mexico border. In exchange for approval—especially for the supplemental request—Republican legislators are demanding changes to border and migration policy, including a series of measures that would severely curtail the right to seek asylum in the United States. Democrats are opposed, but signal that they are willing to discuss some concessions on asylum, possibly including a higher standard that asylum seekers must meet in initial “credible fear” interviews.

The International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch issued in-depth research reports about migration in the treacherous Darién Gap jungle region straddling Colombia and Panama, through which about half a million people have migrated so far this year. Both find stark gaps in government presence and a powerful role for organized crime, along with frequent and severe abuses of migrants passing through the zone. Recommendations recognize the complexity of the situation, and focus largely on efforts in source and transit countries to address the causes of migration, improved integration of migrants especially from Venezuela and Haiti, and better cooperation and coordination between states.

Brief updates look at Costa Rica’s and Panama’s policy of busing northbound migrants through their territory; at Nicaragua’s increasing use as an initial arrival point for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere; and at the situation of thousands of migrants stranded in Chiapas and Oaxaca in southern Mexico.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: October 13, 2023

Due to staff travel, WOLA will not produce Border Updates during the next three weeks. Updates will resume on November 10.

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The Biden administration’s October 5 announcements of new border wall construction and renewed deportations to Venezuela reverberated at the border, along the migration route, and in policy discussions. Many Democratic Party political leaders and non-governmental organizations voiced criticism. Analysts suggested that the moves pointed to a grim political reality for the administration at a time of near-record migrant arrivals at the border.

After three months of sharp growth, migration may be leveling off or even declining since mid-September, according to partial data and anecdotal evidence. September data show a very slight August-to-September reduction in near-record migration through Panama’s Darién Gap Region, and a sharp rise in the number of people traveling through Honduras.

Videos show asylum seekers forced to get past a gauntlet of Texas state police, soldiers, and razor wire in order to access Border Patrol agents further from the river’s edge. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has snarled cargo traffic in northern Mexican border cities by ordering “safety” checkpoints for trucks exiting border bridges. An appeals court heard arguments about Gov. Abbott’s “buoy wall” in Eagle Pass.

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At WOLA: Migration Can’t and Shouldn’t Be Blocked. But it Can be Managed.

Here’s an 1,100-word statement recalling and highlighting some of the basic principles underlying our border and migration work. Backed up with lots of numbers and data, of course.

The main points:

  1. Most migrants arriving in the United States are exercising their right to seek asylum
  2. The United States needs to invest in managing, in a humane and timely manner, migrants and asylum seekers—NOT in more border security
  3. Legislative proposals from “border hawks,” like the “Secure the Border Act” (H.R2), would endanger thousands of lives

Read it here. It comes with an embedded video:

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: October 6, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Two important policy developments occurred as WOLA was drafting and editing this update on October 5. The Biden administration announced that it will waive environmental, public health, and cultural resource protection laws to expedite the construction of the border wall in south Texas. The State Department announced that it will resume direct deportations of Venezuelan migrants to their home country, an economically collapsed dictatorship that the U.S. government does not formally recognize.

Preliminary data indicates that migration increased at the U.S.-Mexico border in September for the third consecutive month. Fiscal 2023 was Border Patrol’s number-two year ever for migrant apprehensions, exceeded only by 2022. 50,000 of September’s Border Patrol apprehensions were reportedly of citizens of Venezuela, which would be a record for a nationality other than Mexico. High migration levels have brought tensions and human rights concerns in San Diego, El Paso, and elsewhere. Deaths of migrants in Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector more than doubled from 2022 to 2023.

U.S. and Mexican diplomats are meeting at the highest levels to discuss issues including migration. Mexico has signaled a willingness to deport more citizens of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia. The Biden administration is aiming to launch a pilot project to help Panama deport more migrants from the Darién Gap region.

About 6,000 people are crossing Mexico’s southern border every day, and the country is on track to exceed 150,000 asylum applications this year. Mexico continues to halt some trains and bus migrants into the interior, while accidents and attacks are claiming many lives along the migration route.

It appears that 75,268 migrants crossed the Darién Gap in September, the second largest-ever monthly total. A UN survey revealed that the average journey through this treacherous region lasts four days.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 29, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

New data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirms that migration increased significantly at the U.S.-Mexico border from July to August. The largest increases were in migrants traveling as families, and migrants from Central America, Cuba, and the Andes. Migration continues to increase in September. Migration had declined in the months following the end of the Title 42 pandemic policy, but by now that lull has completely reversed.

Meeting with the acting commissioner of CBP, Mexican authorities agreed to take measures to reduce concentration of migrants near the common border, including relocating migrants and perhaps even stepping up deportations to some countries. Mexico’s southern-border city of Tapachula continues to fill up as approximately 6,000 migrants arrive every day along Mexico’s border with Guatemala. Migration through Panama’s Darién Gap remains near record levels, and continues to increase through Honduras.

The U.S. government is likely to shut down on October 1 for lack of a congressionally approved budget. The House of Representatives’ Republican majority is coalescing around demands that the Biden administration and the Democratic-majority Senate agree to a list of hard-line border security proposals and asylum restrictions in exchange for keeping the government open.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 22, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Arrivals of migrants, mostly asylum seekers, at the U.S.-Mexico border rose to about 8,000 per day this week, a level last seen in April 2023 before the termination of the Title 42 policy. As shelters fill and Border Patrol begins releasing processed migrants on border cities’ streets, it is apparent that migrants’ post-Title 42 “wait and see” period is over. Asylum seekers are again opting to turn themselves in to Border Patrol despite the Biden administration’s “carrot and stick” approach of legal pathways and harsh limits on asylum access. Shelters and migrant routes are similarly full throughout Mexico.

Nearly 82,000 people migrated in August through the treacherous Darién Gap jungle region straddling Colombia and Panama. During the first eight months of 2023, over 330,000 people have taken this once-impenetrable route. So far this year, 60 percent have been citizens of Venezuela and 21 percent have been children, despite the dangers of the journey. In this region of dense forest and difficult terrain, governments have limited short-term options to control territory or channel the flow of people.

As the U.S. government heads for a September 30 budget deadline and an increasingly likely shutdown, the U.S. House of Representatives’ narrow, fractious Republican majority may be proposing a bill that would keep the government open through October 31 in exchange for some radical changes to border and migration policy that the Democratic-majority Senate and the Biden White House would be certain to oppose.

THE FULL UPDATE:

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U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 15, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that nearly half of all migrant deaths worldwide in 2022 occurred in the U.S.-Mexico border zone. The 686 deaths counted by IOM’s Missing Migrant Project are an undercount, limited by available data. Border Patrol is preliminarily reporting a modest decrease in migrant deaths in 2023, but the full toll of this summer’s record heat remains unclear.

Media reports from throughout the Americas in the past week point to record numbers of migrants transiting Panama and Honduras, while large numbers are stranded at the Peru-Chile border, northern Nicaragua, southern Guatemala, southern Mexico, and of course northern Mexico.

As happened in May, asylum seekers trying to turn themselves in between layers of San Diego’s double border wall are not being processed right away. Border Patrol is leaving them outdoors between the walls for a day or more with little food, water, or bathroom facilities.

The Biden administration is considering a policy change that would require many asylum-seeking families to remain in south Texas while awaiting credible fear interviews. Texas’s state government has now put 36,000 migrants on buses to the U.S. interior. An Illinois coroner’s report about a Venezuelan girl who died aboard a Texas bus has discrepancies with Texas’s account of her health when her family boarded the bus. A federal appeals court is allowing Texas to keep a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass while it considers a Justice Department lawsuit to take them down.

THE FULL UPDATE:

UN draws attention to mounting migrant death toll

A report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) found that the U.S.-Mexico border was “the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide on record” in 2022. IOM’s Missing Migrant Project, which maintains a large database of worldwide migrant deaths, counted 1,457 deaths hemisphere-wide last year, of which 686 occurred on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

As the organization acknowledges, this is an undercount. On the U.S. side alone, “In FY [fiscal year] 2022, more than 890 migrants died attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry across the SWB [southwest border]”—more than the IOM figure, the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice reported in March, in their draft of the May asylum “transit ban” rule. The departments offered no further detail, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has yet to produce the 2022 version of its Border Rescues and Mortality Data report. The 890 figure, too, is an undercount, as regional humanitarian groups along the border find a higher count of migrant remains than Border Patrol does in the regions that they cover.

“Although the data shows that deaths and disappearances in the U.S.-Mexico border decreased by 8 per cent from the previous year, the 2022 figure is likely higher than the available information suggests,” IOM notes, “due to missing official data, including information from Texas border county coroner’s offices and the Mexican search and rescue agency.” Of the 686 documented deaths in 2022, 307 “were linked to the hazardous crossing of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts” in Arizona and New Mexico.

Elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, IOM counted 350 deaths on migration routes in the Caribbean in 2022, a sharp increase over previous years, and 141 in the inhospitable Darién Gap jungle straddling the border between Colombia and Panama.

Between October 2022 and August 2023, according to a recent WOLA interaction with a Border Patrol official, the agency found the remains of 640 migrants, a 24 percent decrease over the same period in 2022. This could be due to a somewhat smaller migrant population—Border Patrol’s 2023 apprehensions were down 9 percent through July compared with 2022—and stepped-up search and rescue efforts.

On the other hand, this year’s record-breaking heat, especially in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, may have killed more people than we yet know. Border Patrol told Border Report this week that it has found 140 remains since October in its El Paso Sector, which includes the area around the Texas city and all of New Mexico. That is up very sharply from 71 in 2022, and from an average of 13 in the 24 years between 1998 and 2021.

In the El Paso Sector, “the wall, the arrival of the Texas National Guard, the surge of Department of Public Safety patrols, all of that is pushing people to the desert,” Carlos Marentes, the executive director of the Border Farm Workers Center, told Border Report.

Reports of increased migration in transit, from Peru to Mexico

After a lull following the end of the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy, countries along the northbound migration route are again experiencing elevated levels of migration, which may portend record arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border this fall. These narratives all come from news coverage from the past seven days.

On Peru’s border with Chile, Infobae reported that dozens of Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Haitian citizens are stranded and sleeping outdoors in the desert border city of Tacna, as Peruvian police prevent them from moving further. The migrants had been living in Chile, which ended a state of emergency in its northern border zone on August 27, making northbound migration somewhat easier.

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: September 1, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Due to a holiday followed by an especially heavy event schedule next week, there will be no Border Update on September 8, 2023.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The military component of the Texas state government’s controversial border security operation came under heavier scrutiny this week, after an August 26 cross-border shooting incident in El Paso and an August 29 investigation into improper spying on civilian migrants. This component of Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) “Operation Lone Star” is a very rare domestic use of military force on U.S. soil with both a long timeframe and rules of engagement permitting use of force against civilians.

Panama is reporting over 70,000 migrants passing through the treacherous Darién Gap region so far in August, a record by far. Data releases from Honduras and Mexico also point to record levels of people in transit. Costa Rica, whose president met with President Biden this week, declared a state of emergency along its border with Panama. Migrants come from dozens of countries, but Venezuela is the predominant nationality.

Alarms went off in parts of the Biden administration earlier this year, CNN reported, after a smuggler who had facilitated some Uzbek asylum seekers’ arrival at the U.S.-Mexico border was alleged to have “links” to ISIS, a group on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations. The migrants themselves, who were released into the United States pending immigration court hearings, are not believed to have terrorist ties.

THE FULL UPDATE:

Shooting, spying incidents deepen controversy about Texas National Guard border deployment

The military component of the Texas state government’s controversial border security operation came under heavier scrutiny this week, after an August 26 shooting incident at the border in El Paso and an August 29 investigation revealing improper spying.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a border and migration hardliner and critic of the Biden administration, expects to spend over $9.5 billion between 2021 and 2025 on a set of border security initiatives he calls “Operation Lone Star” (OLS). These include building segments of border wall with state funds, deploying thousands of police and Texas National Guardsmen to arrest and jail migrants—including asylum seekers—on state charges of “trespassing,” and laying down miles of razor-sharp concertina wire along the Rio Grande, as well as a 1,000-foot wall of buoys in the middle of the river in Eagle Pass.

Since 2021 Abbott has used state funds to send several thousand National Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border, in an unusually large and long mission for a state military force. That deployment has faced past controversies, including poor initial planning that left Texas troops in miserable living conditions and the deaths, in some cases by suicide, of eight assigned guardsmen.

While details about what happened at about 8:50 PM on August 26 remain under wraps, we know that 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.

Mexican authorities identified the victim as Darwin José García, 37, of Veracruz, Mexico. He was treated in a Ciudad Juárez hospital and released. The Juárez newspaper El Diario reported that police said García told them he was planning to cross the river to the United States; the victim told reporters he was “practicing a sport” on the Mexican side.

The circumstances leading the unnamed Texas guardsman to fire their weapon into Mexico remain unclear. The Washington Post, citing a CBP official who had been briefed about the incident, reported that “the Texas Guard member opened fire 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 official added that “details are hazy.” If that is what happened—and it is possible, as Mexican criminal groups do use violence to keep migrants from crossing without paying fees—then the guardsman could argue that the action was within the limits of CBP’s use of force policy. That policy permits lethal force if personnel have “a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO [law enforcement officer] or to another person.”

The incident is being investigated by the state government’s Texas Rangers and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is serving as a liaison between Texas and Mexican authorities. At an August 30 meeting with Texas authorities, Mexico’s consul-general in El Paso “reiterated that the Texas National Guard member’s action was inadmissible,” according to a statement.

This is the second time this year that a Texas National Guardsman has fired a weapon at a civilian. On January 13 near McAllen, Spc. Angel Gallegos shot migrant Ricardo Rodríguez Nieto in the shoulder with his pistol, wounding him. The guardsman claimed that the shooting happened during a scuffle, which Rodríguez Nieto and other migrants dispute; Hidalgo County prosecutors nonetheless declined to seek an indictment. In January 2022, a guardsman also fired his rifle in Laredo to disable a vehicle whose driver had reportedly attempted to run over another guardsman.

In the United States, which since the 1870s has placed strict limits on using military personnel for internal law enforcement, it is exceedingly rare for U.S. military personnel to use lethal force against civilians on U.S. soil. (See WOLA’s 2010 report contrasting the U.S. civil-military model at home with the model its aid programs promote in Latin America.)

All U.S. state governors command National Guard units, soldiers who receive training with the regular U.S. military and serve on a part-time basis unless called up for an emergency. National Guardsmen can also be called up for federal government duty, at which point they are no longer at the governor’s command. Many served lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and presidents since George W. Bush have deployed National Guard and active military personnel to the border.

Those 21st-century federal border missions have restricted guardsmen to duties (“support for CBP”) and rules of engagement that seek to minimize potential contact with civilians. The Biden administration has sent 2,500 National Guard personnel border-wide in a federal support role, but they are rarely in view. (Biden augmented this force with an additional deployment of 1,500 regular military personnel in May, in preparation for the end of the Title 42 pandemic border policy; that force is to be drawn down by the end of August.)

The Operation Lone Star National Guard mission is different because it was ordered by Gov. Abbott, and is funded entirely with Texas’s state budget. That places the guardsmen under the governor’s command, authorized by a different section of the U.S. Code. Abbott has taken the unusual step of authorizing them to detain civilians, and otherwise to be in situations that may involve use of force against them.

Texas National Guardsmen wear uniforms, use weapons, and receive training—including combat training—identical to what the regular U.S. armed forces wear, use, and receive. For a military force to carry out a domestic mission this long in duration, and with such a high probability of hostile interactions with civilians, is highly unusual in the modern United States.

The civil-military risks were underscored on August 29, when two reporters who have covered Operation Lone Star’s military component since 2021, Davis Winkie of Military Times and James Barragán of the Texas Tribune, revealed that members of a Texas National Guard intelligence unit had “secretly infiltrated invite-only WhatsApp group chats filled with migrants and smugglers.”

This activity violated rules against domestic U.S. military spying on civilians, and against state governments running their own espionage operations. Those rules have been in place for decades for a reason, Winkie and Barragán explained: “Defense Department personnel ran massive domestic intelligence operations during the Vietnam War that targeted Americans based solely on how they legally exercised their First Amendment rights.”

The allegations, deeply detailed in the journalists’ report, assert that First Lieutenant Emmanuel Pierre, a guardsman of Haitian descent, infiltrated private WhatsApp groups used by Haitian migrants starting in 2021, when large numbers of Haitian asylum seekers began arriving at the Texas border.

Pierre’s digital spying was overseen by Maj. Dezi Rios, Operation Lone Star’s deputy intelligence director at the time who, when named to the position in October 2021, “had resigned from the San Antonio Police Department that same month after his involvement in a third road rage incident in four years led to misdemeanor criminal charges.” Rios claimed that he voiced concerns about the WhatsApp operation to superiors, but was rebuffed.

At least four Texas National Guard intelligence officers “have faced interim administrative discipline” for the WhatsApp operation and for improperly sharing classified FBI intelligence with colleagues.

The report claims that Operation Lone Star commanders “demanded military-style intelligence from their intelligence personnel.” One service member put it: “Everyone [in charge] wanted to pretend it was like Iraq in 2003… They wanted to do Army stuff, even though this is [legally] not Army stuff.”

“Such intelligence work is essentially unheard of for National Guard members on state active duty,” the Military Times and Texas Tribune report explained, noting that it sets a troubling precedent. “You give intel soldiers enough tools—we’re violating many constitutional rights very quickly,” an unnamed service member told the reporters. “If they’re willing to compromise their integrity over something like that,” one National Guard source said, “who knows where they’ll stop?

In other Operation Lone Star news from the past week:

  • Oklahoma, one of about 15 Republican-led states to send National Guardsmen to Texas to support Operation Lone Star, ended up paying $825,000, or $550 per person per day, for a 30-day deployment of 50 personnel, according to the Oklahoman.
  • A Border Report dispatch from Eagle Pass, Texas recalled that the controversial buoys and concertina wire that Operation Lone Star has placed along the town’s riverfront have done nothing to deter migrants seeking to turn themselves in and request asylum.
  • A petition circulated by Faithful America, a Christian social justice group, accused Gov. Abbott, who is Catholic, of taking “neither Catholic social teaching nor the Gospels’ instructions to welcome the stranger seriously” with his management of OLS. The document has over 10,000 signatures, Newsweek reported.

From the Darién Gap to Mexico, migration levels break records

As August draws to a close, reports from countries south of the U.S.-Mexico border point to migration reaching unprecedented levels.

(On the evening of August 31, as this Update neared publication, the Washington Post published preliminary estimates pointing to 177,000 Border Patrol migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in August, including a record 91,000 family unit members. Measured in migrant encounters, that would make August about 77 percent busier than June, and the 16th busiest month of the Biden administration.)

Panama’s Public Security Ministry tweeted that as of August 28, 68,340 people had migrated in August through the Darién Gap, a roadless region of treacherous primary jungle straddling Panama’s border with Colombia. That number of migrants—which has since grown beyond 72,000 in August—vastly exceeds Panama’s earlier single-month record of 59,773 (October 2022).

The Darién Gap was considered an impenetrable barrier between North and South America until migration increased in the mid-2010s and vastly expanded in 2021. Scores of migrants die each year there of drownings, disease, wild animals, and criminal attacks, and many more are injured, robbed, or sexually assaulted.

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Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: August 25, 2023

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants between ports of entry increased 33 percent from June to July. While still far fewer than in July 2022, the numbers signal that a post-Title 42 lull in migration has come to an end. Nearly all of the increase was arrivals of children and families, with Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras the nationalities whose numbers grew the most. Though large numbers of Venezuelan migrants are en route to the border, the number of Venezuelan migrant encounters actually declined. More than 50,000 people were processed at ports of entry, a record.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit against the state of Texas, seeking to compel Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to remove a “wall” of buoys in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, went before a federal judge in Austin. Texas’s attorneys were not permitted to use their “invasion defense” argument to justify the barrier’s placement. This is one of several recent controversies surrounding Gov. Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” security buildup.

Mexico’s immigration agency and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley opened a facility, on the grounds of an unused hospital, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, across the river from Brownsville, Texas. The site intends to provide an alternative to a sprawling tent encampment that has formed along the Rio Grande in Matamoros, as asylum seekers there struggle to secure appointments using the CBP One smartphone app.

 

THE FULL UPDATE:

CBP releases July migration details

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data on August 18 revealing a 33 percent increase in July, compared to June, in the number of migrants whom U.S. Border Patrol apprehended between the U.S.-Mexico border’s ports of entry (99,539 to 132,652).

Data table

This was still 27 percent fewer migrants than a year ago, in July 2022 (181,834), when the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy was in full effect. In July 2023, 9 percent of migrants had been encountered at least once before in the previous 12 months; that was way down from 22 percent in July 2022. This “recidivism” number was much higher during the Title 42 period, when quick expulsions eased repeat crossings.

Data table

The sharp increase over June indicates an end to the sharp drop in migration that followed Title 42’s May 11, 2023 termination. July’s partially recovered migration flow differs from the pre-May 11 period, though, in its demographic makeup, in the part of the border where migrants are arriving, in migrants’ ability to use ports of entry, and to some extent by migrants’ nationalities.

Demographic makeup

Nearly all of the July increase was child and family migrants, whose numbers grew 85 percent from June to July (38,002 to 70,206, combining family-unit members and unaccompanied children). The 60,161 family-unit members apprehended in July 2023 were the most in a single month since December 2022, and before that since September 2021.

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