Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Migration drops, “border deal” fallout, Mayorkas impeachment

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.

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THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• Migration plunged at the border from December to January

After migration at the U.S.-Mexico border reached a record high in December, new CBP data showed January to be the third-quietest month at the U.S.-Mexico border of the Biden administration’s 36 full months. Border Patrol apprehensions dropped 50 percent in a single month, the sharpest single-month drop in over 24 years of data. Reasons appear to include rumors circulating among migrants, seasonal patterns, and a crackdown by Mexican government forces. An increasing share of migrants are coming to Arizona and California.

• Fallout from collapse of the Senate “border deal”

After the February 7 failure of negotiated bill language restricting migrants’ access to asylum, the Senate approved a Ukraine, Israel, and other foreign aid funding bill without that language, or any other border and migration-related content. That bill now goes to the Republican-majority House, whose leadership opposes bringing it to debate because it does not harden the border or restrict migration. Democrats are seeking to take advantage of the “border deal’s” failure to shore up their position on border and migration issues as the 2024 campaign gets underway, even though doing so risks normalizing the idea of blocking most asylum seekers’ right to seek protection.

• House Republicans impeach DHS Secretary over border and migration

After failing to win enough votes to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week, House Republican leaders’ second try succeeded by a single vote on February 13. The impeachment, arguing that Mayorkas’s handling of the border and migration constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors,” now goes to the Democratic-majority Senate, where a conviction is all but impossible and even a full-blown trial is very unlikely.

THE FULL UPDATE:

Migration plunged at the border from December to January

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about its encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in January. The numbers showed a 50 percent drop in Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants from December, from a single-month record of 249,735 to 124,220. January was the third-quietest month at the U.S.-Mexico border of the Biden administration’s 36 full months.

50 percent is the steepest one-month drop in apprehensions in more than 24 years of available monthly data going back to October 1999. The one-month drop was sharper than those measured in the first full month of the pandemic in 2020 (-47 percent) and the first full month after Title 42 ended in 2023 (-42 percent).

Data table

In particular, Border Patrol’s apprehensions of Venezuelan citizens between the ports of entry dropped 91 percent. Venezuela fell from the number-two nationality of apprehended migrants in December to number seven in January.

Data table

Nearly every nationality exhibited double-digit percentage declines in Border Patrol apprehensions.

Data table

Another 51,985 people came to CBP’s land-border ports of entry, about 45,000 of them with appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app. In total, CBP encountered 176,205 migrants last month, down from 301,983 in December.

Data table

This confirms reports of a decline first covered in WOLA’s January 26 Border Update, which suggested three possible reasons:

• False rumors about a year-end border closure or halt in CBP One appointments at ports of entry, which may have encouraged asylum seekers to cross into the United States before the end of the year, leaving fewer to cross in January. The Washington Examiner reported on these rumors, collecting a few tweets for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico that had sought to debunk them.
• Seasonal patterns: January is a month of cold at the U.S.-Mexico border and rain along parts of the migration route, following end-of-year holidays. Migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen from December to January every year since 2014 (except for a 6 percent increase in January 2021).
• The Mexican government’s stepped-up migration enforcement. NewsNation this week visited one example of Mexico’s new efforts to block northbound migrants, a military and National Guard “command center” across from Jacumba Hot Springs, California, where many asylum seekers have been crossing to turn themselves in to Border Patrol.

As has been the case every month since July 2023, Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona sector (50,565 apprehensions) led all of the agency’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors. As recently as December 2022, Tucson had been in fifth place. The San Diego, California sector is now in second place; in December 2022 it was sixth.

Data table

Further south along the U.S.-bound migration route, numbers are mostly, though not entirely, lower.

In Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, a municipal human rights official told EFE that the city “is currently experiencing one of the periods with the lowest presence of migrants.” Santiago González called it “a suspicious calm” amid a possibility of migration policy changes coming from Washington.

The government of Honduras registered 38,495 migrants transiting its territory in January, down 10 percent from December. Most were from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Ecuador, and Guinea.

Data table

Of migrants transiting Honduras surveyed by UNHCR, at least 30 percent “reported having international protection needs because they had to flee their country of origin due to violence or persecution.” 38 percent reported suffering “some form of mistreatment or abuse during their journey,” though infrequently in Honduras.

Panama’s authorities counted 36,001 people migrating through the treacherous Darién Gap region in January, an increase from December and much more than January 2023, but still the 4th-smallest monthly total of the last 12 months.

Data table

At some point last month, the 500,000th Venezuelan migrant of the 2020s—in fact, the 500,000th just since January 2022—crossed the Darién Gap. That’s one out of every sixty Venezuelan citizens, in 25 months.

Fallout from collapse of the Senate “border deal”

On February 12 the U.S. Senate passed a supplemental appropriation, responding to a Biden administration request for emergency aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other foreign priorities. This is the bill that once had Senate negotiators’ “border deal” attached to it, with new limits on the right to seek asylum at the border (covered in the February 9 and several previous WOLA Border Updates). With 45 of 49 Republican senators voting “no,” the Senate struck down that earlier version of the bill on February 7.

The bill that cleared the Senate this week has no border content, neither new funds nor new migration limits. As the Senate debated it over the weekend, procedural maneuvers and internal disputes among Republican senators prevented consideration of any border or migration-related amendments. A Twitter thread from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) listed some of the border-hardening and migration-restriction amendments that Republican senators had prepared but were unable to get to the Senate floor.

The bill has now gone to the Republican-majority House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) stated that he does not intend to bring it up for debate because it lacks any new border or migration restrictions. In a colorful tweet, the Democrats’ chief Senate negotiator, Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) voiced exasperation about a new demand for border language after Senate Republicans’ “no” votes defeated the negotiators’ earlier language, for which Democrats had conceded some deep restrictions on migrant protections.

Speaker Johnson has called for a meeting with President Biden to discuss adding border and migration measures to the bill. The White House flatly refused.

Analysts note that Ukraine aid supporters in both parties might force the bill’s consideration in the House, over the Speaker’s objections, if more than half of representatives sponsor a “discharge petition.” If it happens, an eventual House debate might involve amendments limiting asylum and other migration pathways.

Another alternative emerged on February 15. Ten members of the House, five from each party, are proposing an alternative bill ( text/ summary from Punchbowl News). This legislation would grant foreign aid similar to what is in the Senate bill, but includes some controversial border provisions:

• A one-year DHS authority to shut the border to all undocumented migrants without regard to asylum needs, presumably requiring expulsion to Mexico;
• A one-year authority to expel, into Mexico or alternative countries, all migrants deemed to be “inadmissible” who do not specifically ask for protection;
• A higher standard of fear that asylum seekers would have to meet in screening interviews;
• A prohibition on transporting migrants for any purpose other than adjudicating their status; and
• A one-year restart of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Next steps for this bill, which has yet to be formally introduced, are not clear.

The “borderless” foreign aid bill that passed the Senate cut out $20 billion in border and migration money that the Biden administration had requested. The removal of border funding from the bill could leave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with insufficient funds to manage a moment of historically high migration at the border, NBC News reported. Grants to cities receiving asylum seekers could dry up. The Washington Post reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is facing a $700 million budget deficit and may have to release thousands of detained people.

The House and Senate will both be out of session next week.

For months, polls have shown U.S. public opinion increasingly favoring harder-line border policies and restrictions on migration, and giving Donald Trump an advantage over Joe Biden on the border and immigration issue. In recent days, Senate Democrats and the White House have stopped ducking the issue, seeking to draw attention to Trump and Republicans defeating a border deal that Republicans had in fact demanded.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, the border deal was crushed because of you,” read an official White House tweet to Speaker Johnsonin the design of a Valentine’s Day message.

Numerous news analyses, and a memo to colleagues from Sen. Murphy, are arguing that a Democratic House candidate’s victory in a February 13 New York special election offers a “roadmap,” “ playbook,” or “ blueprint” for the party to address border security and migration during the 2024 campaign cycle.

Border security and immigration were the number-one issue of contention as New York’s 3rd District voted to replace expelled Rep. George Santos (R). Constant attacks seeking to tie him to President Joe Biden’s border and migration policies failed to prevent Tom Suozzi from winning by at least seven percentage points.

Suozzi, analysts argue, neutralized Republican attacks and won by leaning into some of the asylum and migration restrictions and increased border policing foreseen in budget legislation that fell to Republican opposition on February 7. At the same time, Suozzi called for more legal migration pathways.

Advocates for human rights and immigration reform, including some members of Congress, worry that the Democrats’ strategic shift may normalize the “border deal” text’s provisions that would have denied people a chance to ask for protection on U.S. soil, as laid out in U.S. law and the Refugee Convention, and expelling them into Mexico instead.

House Republicans impeach DHS Secretary over border and migration

After failing by one vote on February 6, the House of Representatives’ Republican majority succeeded on February 13, again by one vote, in impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

While the Democratic-majority Senate is certain not to convict and may not even hold something resembling a “trial,” this is the second-ever impeachment of a cabinet official in U.S. history and the first since 1876. All but three Republicans agreed that Mayorkas’s management of the border constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors”; all Democrats voted “no.”

Last week’s vote to impeach failed by a 214-216 margin, a stunning result that House majority-party leaders usually avoid by having more certainty over the vote count. This week’s vote outcome changed because Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) returned after receiving cancer treatments, and Rep. Judy Chu (D-California) contracted COVID and could not be present to vote.

As the Mayorkas impeachment heads to the Senate, the New York Times reported that the chamber’s leadership will pursue a fast, truncated, low-profile process. At Just Security, four legal scholars offered a roadmap for how the Senate could quickly dismiss the Mayorkas case without full-blown trial proceedings.

Rep. Mark Green (R-Tennessee), who as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee managed the Mayorkas impeachment, announced on February 14 that he will not seek re-election this year.

Other News

• A report from the ACLU of Arizona and partner organizations detailed Border Patrol’s, and other U.S. immigration agencies’, confiscation of asylum seekers’ belongings on “hundreds” of documented occasions. Confiscated and trashed items include medications and medical devices, identification documents, religious garb and items, money, cellphones, and irreplaceable family heirlooms.
• The Huffington Post revealed internal Border Patrol emails and text messages showing agents’ continued widespread use of the slur “tonk” to refer to migrants. The agency’s management failed to curb agents’ use of a word that reportedly refers to the sound that their heavy utility flashlights make when hitting a migrant’s head.
• During winter-weather conditions near Sásabe, Arizona, humanitarian volunteers evacuated some of a group of about 400 migrants waiting to turn themselves in to Border Patrol near the border wall, bringing them to the nearby Border Patrol station for processing. Some reported that agents threatened them with arrest for smuggling undocumented people.
• CBS News revealed that the CBP One app has been used 64.3 million times by people inside Mexico seeking to secure one of 1,450 daily appointments at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. CBP launched the app’s appointment-making feature in January 2023. This obviously does not mean that 64.3 million people have sought to migrate: it reflects numerous repeat attempts.
• In Mexico’s organized crime-heavy border state of Tamaulipas, Doctors Without Borders documented a 70 percent increase, from October to January, in consultations for sexual assault among the migrants the organization has treated in Matamoros and Reynosa.
• The organization also attended 95 cases of sexual violence victimization in 2023 in Piedras Negras, in the adjacent state of Coahuila, across from Eagle Pass, Texas. Mexico-based journalist Ioan Grillo published highlights of interviews with people in Piedras Negras. “They hunt them down and they get every peso they can from them,” the nun who runs the Casa del Migrante said of the Coahuila state police force. “It’s terrible.”
• The University of California at San Diego’s health trauma center treated 455 patients last year who suffered serious injuries while trying to cross the border—441 of them the result of falls from the very high border wall that the Trump administration installed there. That is up from 311 wall-related injuries in 2022, 254 in 2021, 91 in 2020, and 42 in 2019.
• At the Kino Border Initiative’s shelter in Nogales, most migrants—many of them families with small children—are now from southern Mexico, especially the embattled state of Guerrero. 83 percent now say they are fleeing violence, a much larger share than before, reported Arizona Public Media.
• “Many people in Ciudad Juárez and other parts of the border have reported waiting up to three months to receive an appointment through the [CBP One] application, while others receive it in a matter of days or weeks,” reported Verónica Martínez of the Ciudad Juárez-based La Verdad. Martínez’s feature documented many challenges that asylum seekers face while trying to use the app.
• At least four people died along the Caribbean coast of Panama’s Darién Gap region after a boat carrying about 25 migrants shipwrecked in rough seas, AFP reported.
• A Human Rights First fact sheet explained that Black asylum seekers, including many stranded in Mexico awaiting appointments at ports of entry, “face significant discrimination and barriers within the U.S. asylum system and encounter targeted violence and mistreatment.”
• The migration authority director of Guatemala, which inaugurated a new presidential administration last month, paid a visit to the United States. The Guatemalan Migration Institute’s (IGM) Stuard Rodríguez met with Assistant Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner for International Affairs James Collins, and will visit a CBP detention facility and operations center in Tucson.
• Guatemala is dissolving its police force’s border unit (Dipafront), which has been tarred with widespread corruption allegations. Earlier in the week, an editorial in Guatemala’s Prensa Libre newspaper called on the new government to carry out a purge at Dipafront, which regularly shakes down migrants for cash.
• Guatemala also reported expelling 1,642 people into Honduras so far this year: 76 percent from Venezuela, and the rest from Haiti, Ecuador, Honduras, and Colombia.
• The notion that migrants supply the United States with fentanyl is false, explained an Austin American-Statesman fact check. The story is “a classic example of what we call dangerous speech: language that inspires fear and violence by describing another group of people as an existential threat,” wrote Catherine Buerger and Susan Benesch of the Dangerous Speech Project at the Los Angeles Times.
• Axios published a gossip-heavy account of Biden administration infighting, name-calling, and a “winding” and “irritable” President, as officials responded ineffectively to increased migration at the border. “The idea that no one wanted to ‘own it’ came up repeatedly in interviews about the border crisis.”