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.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released information about migration in September, the final month of the U.S. federal government’s fiscal year. It showed a 25 percent year-on-year drop in Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions, with most of the reduction happening since January and more sharply since June. That is the result of a Mexican government crackdown on migration transiting the country, along with the Biden administration’s new restrictions on asylum access. Data also show a 26 percent drop in seizures of the drug fentanyl, the first decline since fentanyl began appearing in the mid-2010s.

The federal judiciary’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier district court verdict finding that the practice of “metering”–posting CBP officers on the borderline to turn asylum seekers back from border ports of entry—is illegal. The decision caps seven years of litigation from migrant rights advocates. It does not directly affect the Biden administration’s current policy of turning back asylum seekers who have not made appointments at ports of entry using the CBP One app; legal challenges continue in that case.

“Caravans” of migrants, some saying they fear losing access to asylum and CBP One pathways after the U.S. election, have been forming in Mexico’s far south. Darién Gap migration appears to be leveling off in October after a sharp increase in September. Insecurity is worsening in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, where many migrants are blocked or awaiting CBP One appointments.

THE FULL UPDATE:

CBP publishes fiscal 2024 border data

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has released data about migration and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border during September, which was also the final month of the U.S. government’s 2024 fiscal year.

The numbers show that Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants between ports of entry dropped 25 percent from 2023 to 2024 (from 2,045,838 to 1,530,523). The causes are a crackdown on in-transit migration that Mexico’s government began carrying out in January, and the Biden administration’s June proclamation and rule banning most access to the U.S. asylum system between ports of entry when numbers are high. The first measure reduced monthly apprehensions by about half; the second reduced them further by a bit more than half.

Data table

Migrants who entered CBP custody at ports of entry, most with CBP One appointments, increased 41 percent from 2023 to 2024 (429,831 to 604,482). That is because CBP increased appointments to their current level of 1,450 per day in June 2023, near the end of the 2023 fiscal year.

Data Table

Combining Border Patrol and port-of-entry encounters, the nationalities most frequently encountered at the border in 2024 were Mexico (-9% from 2023), Venezuela (-2%), Guatemala (-7%), Cuba (+6%), Honduras (-34%), Colombia (-20%), Ecuador (+5%), Haiti (+16%), El Salvador (-12%), and China (+57%).

Data table

Of the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border, the agency apprehended the most migrants in the Tucson, Arizona sector (463,567). However, in April, and in June through September, San Diego, California (324,260) surpassed Tucson as the number-one destination of apprehended migrants. In August and September, Tucson has been third behind San Diego and El Paso (Texas and New Mexico, 256,102).

Data table

The top three nationalities of migrants apprehended in Tucson this year were Mexico, Guatemala, and “Other Countries” (CBP reports 21 countries and puts all the rest in an “other” category. For “other” to be in the top three shows the unprecedented international diversity of today’s migrant population.) The top three in San Diego were “Other Countries,” Colombia, and Mexico.

38 percent of migrants encountered in 2024, whether by Border Patrol or at ports of entry, were members of family units. Another 5 percent were unaccompanied children. This is similar to 2023 (33 percent and 6 percent, respectively).

For Border Patrol apprehensions only—the category for which CBP has published demographic data going back to 2012—the proportion of families and children (43 percent) is the second-largest in the dataset, and probably ever. The principal nationalities of families and children in 2024 were Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, “Other Countries,” and Cuba.

Data table

In September, Border Patrol apprehended 53,858 people between ports of entry. That is similar to July and August, and just slightly less than September 2020 when Donald Trump was president during the pandemic.

Data table

48 percent of September’s Border Patrol apprehensions were of citizens of Mexico, the largest proportion of Mexican citizens since January 2021 (51 percent). This would indicate that migrants from more distant countries are either pausing in response to policy changes, are blocked by Mexico’s operations or other nations’ recent visa restrictions, or are opting to wait for CBP One appointments.

The month of December 2023 set a record for Border Patrol migrant apprehensions. Since then, apprehensions have declined 78 percent border-wide due to crackdowns in Mexico and in U.S. asylum access. Texas (-86 percent) and Arizona (-85 percent) led the four U.S.-Mexico border states with almost identical rates of decrease. It is notable that the Texas state government’s “Operation Lone Star” border security crackdown did not cause migration to decline more than in states that have not carried out their own crackdowns.

“Overall, southwest border deaths were down 30% comparing the fourth quarter of last fiscal year to this fiscal year,” CBP reported, without offering aggregate numbers. We know from media reports that Border Patrol recovered 568 remains of migrants in fiscal 2021, 895 in 2022, 704 in 2023, and (as of September, according to CBS News) 560 in 2024. Agents in the El Paso Sector recovered the remains of at least 175 migrants during fiscal 2024, USA Today reported.

Data table

Though the 2024 number is incomplete and may end up higher, for now it represents 37 remains recovered per every 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions, up from 2023 (34 per 100,000) and down from 2022 (41 per 100,000).

Seizures of fentanyl fell for the first time since the drug began appearing. CBP seized 21,148 pounds of the potent opioid in 2024, down from 26,718 pounds in 2023 (-26%).

Data table

Similar to past years, 86.1 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at border ports of entry. Of the remaining 13.9 percent seized by Border Patrol, 4.5 percent was seized from vehicles at the agency’s interior checkpoints.

Also similar to past years, 97 percent was seized in California or Arizona. “Half of the fentanyl coming into the U.S. is seized at the Mariposa Port of Entry” in Nogales, Arizona, CBP’s top official, Troy Miller, told the Arizona Republic. The port, west of downtown with much cargo traffic, is now able to scan about 50 percent of cargo, Miller added.

Seizures of cocaine increased 10 percent and methamphetamine increased 30 percent. Heroin fell 21 percent and marijuana 8 percent.

The Migration Policy Institute published a study of border migration trends, coinciding with CBP’s data release. The analysis finds that the drop in migration has resulted from the Biden administration’s combination of asylum curbs, encouragement of other countries’ enforcement, and expansion of lawful migration pathways. It concludes that the migration reduction’s long-term persistence is impossible to predict.

In the first article of a pre-election series, ProPublica published a detailed overview of how migration at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted during the past few years, noting changes in nationalities and demographics and effects on the immigration court system, receiving communities, the U.S. labor market, and electoral politics. The investigation found that the newly arrived migrants have been “concentrated in relatively few places around the country.”

Ninth Circuit strikes down “metering” at ports of entry

The federal judiciary’s California-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court’s earlier ruling that Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) practice of “metering” asylum seekers at official border crossings is illegal. The term refers to stationing officers at the crossings’ borderline to turn back people without U.S. documentation, preventing them from setting foot on U.S. soil and asking for protection, while allowing only a small number of asylum seekers to access ports of entry each day.

The appeals court judges’ 2-1 decision determined, in the written opinion of Judge Michelle Friedland, that “a noncitizen who presents herself to a border official at a port of entry has arrived in the United States… whether she is standing just at the edge of the port of entry or somewhere within it.”

U.S. law states that a person physically present in the United States has the right to ask for asylum if they fear their life or freedom would be in danger upon return to their country. “You are not breaking the law by seeking asylum at a port of entry,” the Trump administration’s Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, tweeted in June 2018, at the height of that year’s family separations crisis. “Metering,” however, has strictly limited asylum seekers’ ability to access ports of entry.

The decision striking down “metering” caps a seven-year legal battle led by the San Diego and Tijuana-based Al Otro Lado, along with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the American Immigration Council, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Democracy Forward, along with the law firms Mayer Brown and Vinson and Elkins.

CBP officially rescinded the metering policy in 2021. The Ninth Circuit’s October 23 decision does not appear to affect the Biden administration’s current policy of turning away nearly all asylum seekers who show up to ports of entry without having secured one of 1,450 daily appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app. A May 2024 Human Rights Watch report called this “digital metering.” Organizations involved in the “metering” case have filed a new lawsuit challenging turnbacks of asylum seekers without CBP One appointments.

Notes from along the migration route

“Caravans” in southern Mexico

A “caravan” numbering perhaps 700 migrants, which departed Mexico’s far south at the beginning of the month, is walking in the southern state of Oaxaca, adjacent to the country’s southern border state of Chiapas. Another group, combining migrants from many nationalities, departed Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas on October 20.

Some participants cited in press coverage say that they worry that the possibility of securing CBP One appointments will end if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the November 5 U.S. election.

Mexico’s migration agency (National Migration Institute, INM) sought to discourage the October 20 group by offering bus rides from Tapachula to Chiapas’s capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, about 150 miles away. “They told us that they are going to give us a 10-day permit there so that we can wait for a CBP One appointment and they will take us to Tuxtla Gutiérrez,” a Honduran man told EFE.

El Paso, Texas municipal officials told Border Report that they are monitoring the caravans moving through Mexico’s far south, although “we don’t know [to] what part of the border they’re going.” The Mexican government’s secretaries of interior, foreign affairs, army, and navy met on October 18 “to review the current situation of irregular migration crossing the country, and the repatriation of Mexicans,” Milenio reported.

Mexico’s mass busing of migrants

Increasing organized crime violence in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco may be related to the Mexican government’s mass busing of migrants to the state’s capital, Villahermosa, mainly from the U.S. border region, according to an InSight Crime analysis. An already existing conflict between organized crime factions in the state is being exacerbated by “large sums” that can be gained “from extorting vulnerable migrants” being bused there at a rate of about 10,000 people per month.

Mexican civil society organizations making up the “Central Border Monitoring Group” denounced that Mexico City authorities have been arranging to bus migrants to states further north, like Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí, “without clear information or the delivery of regular transit documents.”

Insecurity in southern Mexico

Tapachula, Chiapas, now leads all Mexican cities in perceptions of citizen insecurity, according to a survey from the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Ninety-two percent of Tapachula residents told surveyors that they fear crime. Chiapas, a border state through which large numbers of drugs and people are smuggled and trafficked, has experienced a sharp rise in organized crime violence over the past year. The city’s mayor told EFE that Tapachula “concentrates 60 percent of the migrants in Mexico”; this estimate may be high, but the number of migrants there is very large. Tens of thousands of people, most seeking to make it to the United States, are stranded there by Mexico’s efforts to block them and by long waits for CBP One appointments.

At Redacción Regional, Bryan Avelar reported from Tapachula, finding that the city “is a kind of paradise for the trafficking of migrant women,” Avelar wrote. Mexican authorities reported rescuing nine migrants from India, Nepal, and Bangladesh whom a criminal group had kidnapped for ransom in the southern border zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. They reported no arrests of kidnappers.

There were no new developments in the case of two soldiers accused of opening fire on a vehicle carrying migrants on a Chiapas highway on October 1, killing six of them.

The Darién Gap, Colombia, and Panama

According to Colombian government data, the number of migrants departing for the treacherous Darién Gap route to Panama during the first 15 days of October (12,110) was about 4 percent less than the number who departed during the last 15 days of September (12,628). That points to Darién Gap migration holding roughly steady after a 51 percent increase from August to September (see WOLA’s October 18 Border Update).

“We’ve reached almost 20 flights in 3 months, trying to discourage people from” migration through the Darién Gap region, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, told reporters during a visit to France. Mulino was referring to stepped-up deportation flights being carried out with U.S. support. As a result, the Panamanian president added, migration through the Darién “has gone down (by around 20% so far this year compared to 2023), but my concern is the worsening of the crisis in Venezuela,” EFE reported.

In a U.S.-assisted operation, Colombian police and judicial authorities arrested 17 people, one of them Nicaraguan, for charging migrants $200 to $450 each to travel from Colombia’s Caribbean island department of San Andrés to Nicaragua by boat. Four of the seventeen—including two local government officials from San Andrés—stand accused of charging migrants from Asia, particularly Vietnam, $2,000 to $2,500 each to fly from Colombia’s border with Ecuador to Nicaragua via San Andrés. The San Andrés to Nicaragua route allows migrants to avoid the Darién Gap.

Reports on trends

Among trends highlighted in the Mixed Migration Center’s latest quarterly report on Latin America are reduced migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, reduced Darién Gap migration, and a drop in asylum cases in Mexico. (Last week, Panama released data showing a September increase in Darién Gap migration, led by Venezuelan citizens, though migration remains below levels measured during the first half of 2024.)

The UN Refugee Agency published its annual report for Mexico operations in 2023. Among findings are that nearly 400 mostly charity-run migrant shelters operate in the country, and that over 600 companies have committed to employing refugees inside Mexico.

Other news

  • On Wednesday, October 30, 5:00 Eastern, join WOLA, Alliance San Diego, the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, Hope Border Institute, and Human Rights Watch for an online discussion of excessive use of force by Texas state National Guard and police personnel on the borderline.
  • Two San Diego hospitals, Scripps Mercy Hospital and UC San Diego Medical Center, report 993 “severe falls” from the border wall so far this year (Scripps through August, UCSD through September). That is up 58 percent over falls recorded in all of 2023, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee hypothesized that Mexico’s placement of troops in an area east of the city with little or no fencing might be leading more migrants, including those seeking to turn themselves in to authorities, to attempt to scale the wall.
  • A Mother Jones investigation of the U.S. government’s search-and-rescue system for preventing the deaths of migrants in distress found “a scattershot emergency response system with little accountability, in which responsibility for saving migrants’ lives is divided among Border Patrol agents whose primary duty is law enforcement, not search and rescue; overtaxed county search and rescue teams; and unpaid volunteers from humanitarian groups.”
  • San Antonio’s ABC affiliate featured the work of Operation Identification, a nonprofit at Texas State University that is helping to identify the remains of migrants found in the Texas borderlands and provide closure to their loved ones.
  • Fernando Castro, a former Guatemalan consular official, wrote a column in Guatemala’s Prensa Libre noting recent government efforts to link up with U.S. medical examiners—especially in Pima County, Arizona—to help relatives of missing migrants contribute DNA samples that could match them to migrant remains recovered near the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • A team of Washington Post reporters published a dispatch from south Texas about the impacts of border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley region. The border river’s unstable course requires segments of barrier to be built as much as two miles inland, “leaving thousands of acres in the liminal space between the border and the barrier.” That leaves plenty of U.S. soil upon which people have the right to request asylum.
  • A New York Times analysis contended that Donald Trump is “doubling down” on the border and immigration as the issue that can win the election for him, despite poll data showing voters more concerned about economic issues.
  • Amid Democrats’ rightward pivot on border and immigration issues during the 2024 election cycle, Vox reporter Nicole Narea wrote that if elected, Kamala Harris would probably adopt a “two-pronged” approach, keeping current curbs on asylum and boosting border security while also maintaining alternative legal pathways for migrants.
  • “I have organized around immigration for over two decades, during which Democrats repeatedly succumbed to their opponents’ playbook and positioned the issue as a national security and public safety issue,” Silky Shah of Detention Watch wrote at Inquest. “Yet even in this climate, there is no escaping how surreal this moment is” amid a nationwide rightward shift. Shah concludes, “In many ways, the current conditions require us to return to the basics of organizing and movement building.”
  • A report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, supported by the International Institute of New England, highlighted the severe humanitarian consequences of recent U.S. policies restricting the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Asylum seekers, the report finds, face worsened risks of kidnapping, extortion, and abuse while waiting in Mexico; Black and LGBTQIA+ migrants face particular discrimination and targeting.
  • In response to an NBC News revelation that 30 percent of Border Patrol’s Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) cameras are broken, Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that border surveillance technology is “political theater” and “a wasteful endeavor that is ill-equipped to respond to an ill-defined problem.”
  • Iowa Public Radio, reporting from Iowa; Gothamist, reporting from Long Island, New York; and Politico, reporting from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, illustrated how the border security and migration debate is affecting congressional campaigns, particularly in swing districts, far from the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • Reporting from the border town of Douglas, Arizona, Agénce France Presse echoed residents’ exasperation with politicians from elsewhere falsely portraying border communities as dangerous places in crisis.
  • A group of investigative journalism outlets published a report about “Border 911,” a non-profit led by Tom Homan, who served as acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director during the Trump administration. The report alleges that Homan’s group, linked to “dark money” efforts and border security contracting, uses disinformation about immigration, particularly the notion that migrants and asylum seekers constitute an “invasion,” to build political support for far-right policies and to undermine electoral processes.
  • A CBP officer faces aggravated assault charges after he fired his weapon 11 times while off duty in an apparent road rage incident on a highway on-ramp in El Paso, Border Report reported.
  • A Breitbart report noted increased arrivals of asylum seekers turning themselves in to Border Patrol in mid-Texas’s Del Rio Sector. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) source told Breitbart‘s Randy Clark, a former Border Patrol agent, that “nearly 160” unaccompanied children from Central and South American nations crossed into Eagle Pass within the past week.
  • NBC News obtained Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data indicating that the Department has identified about 600 people in the United States with possible ties to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization. Of those, about 100 are considered “confirmed members of the gang.” As about 600,000 citizens of Venezuela have been released into the United States in the 2020s, the DHS list covers perhaps 0.1 percent of that population.
  • Border Report reported on an October 20 shootout between members of Mexico’s National Guard and members of a criminal group on a highway that follows Mexico’s side of the border between El Paso and Tornillo, Texas. The road has recently been upgraded, noted Border Report’s Julián Resendiz, but “some truckers have expressed misgivings about using the highway due to well-documented drug cartel activity in the area known as El Valle de Juarez (Valley of Juarez).”