July 31, 2024

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Developments

A 38-year-old mother from Ecuador was found dead along the Mexican side of the border wall, south of Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector (southeast California), on July 22. Border Patrol agents found the victim’s 10-year-old daughter alive next to her body. The cause of death appeared to be heat exhaustion and/or dehydration.

• “Cuerpo de Migrante Ecuatoriana Fue Hallado en Frontera Entre Mexico y Estados Unidos, su Hija de 10 Anos la Acompanaba” (El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), July 30, 2024).
• “Usbp Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino @Usbpchiefelc on Twitter” (Twitter, Monday, July 29, 2024)

In an en banc ruling, the federal judiciary’s Fifth Circuit permitted Texas’s state government to keep a 1,000-foot string of buoys and serrated metal discs floating in the middle of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass while legal challenges continue. The ruling overturned an appeals court’s earlier decision. A trial over the buoys themselves—not the injunction preventing their use while arguments continue—is to begin on August 6 in Austin.

One of the notoriously conservative circuit’s Judges, James Ho, submitted an opinion supporting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) use of the Constitution’s “invasion” clause, implying that migrants and asylum seekers are foreign invaders against whom Texas may defend itself.

• Ryan Autullo, “Texas Can Maintain Floating Border Barriers, Fifth Circuit Rules” (Bloomberg Law, July 30, 2024).
• “Aaron Torres @aarontorres_ on Twitter” (Twitter, July 30, 2024).
• “Raffi Melkonian @Rmfifthcircuit on Twitter” (Twitter, July 30, 2024).

The border and migration were core issues in dueling campaign ads and speeches issued in the past 48 hours by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

In a new video ad and at an Atlanta campaign rally yesterday, Harris attacked Trump for leading opposition to a Senate “border deal” bill in February that would have paid for hiring more Border Patrol agents and would have cut off asylum access when border encounters exceed a daily threshold. “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law,” Harris said yesterday.

• Asma Khalid, “Harris Tries to Flip the Script on Trump on the Border During Raucous Georgia Speech” (National Public Radio, July 30, 2024).
• Priscilla Alvarez, “Harris Campaign Offers First Glimpse of Its Immigration Offensive” (CNN, July 30, 2024).

(See past daily links posts for coverage of that failed legislation. On June 5 the Biden administration began implementing a rule, without legislation backing it up, that bans asylum when daily Border Patrol apprehensions exceed 2,500.) On Monday the union representing asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) filed a brief in support of the ACLU’s lawsuit seeking to block the June 5 rule.

• Hamed Aleaziz, “Asylum Officers’ Union Opposes Biden Border Restrictions” (The New York Times, July 30, 2024).

The Trump campaign continued attacking Harris with themes (criminals, fentanyl, and terrorists allegedly crossing the border) that appeared in its first television ad of the general election, released Monday. At a press conference, Senate Republicans featured a blown-up printout of a 2017 tweet from then-senator Harris reading, “An undocumented migrant is not a criminal.” (This is true: being in the United States without documentation is not a criminal offense.)

• Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), “Daines: ‘If You Like San Francisco Politics, You’ll Love Kamala Harris’” (U.S. Senate, July 30, 2024).
• Frank Bruni, “Trump vs. ‘America’s Border Czar’” (The New York Times, July 30, 2024).

Media analyses continued to explore Harris’s vice presidential record on border and migration policy, particularly her performance as the Biden administration’s point person on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America.

Though her initial efforts in that role were “widely panned, even by some Democrats,” the New York Times stated, she later had “some success” in “a role that came to be defined as a combination of chief fund-raiser and conduit between business leaders and the economies” of northern Central America, particularly in encouraging private-sector investment.

Though it is hard to assign weight to the long-term strategy that Harris oversaw, U.S.-Mexico border encounters with migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras dropped from an average of 58,420 per month in fiscal 2021 to 38,657 per month (-34%) so far in fiscal 2024. By contrast, average monthly encounters with all nationalities increased 40 percent during that period.

• Jazmine Ulloa, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “As Republicans Attack Harris on Immigration, Here’s What Her Record Shows” (The New York Times, July 31, 2024).
• Carine Hajjar, “‘Czar’ or Not, Kamala Harris Bungled Immigration” (The Boston Globe, July 30, 2024).

Operating on the assumption that then-senator Harris’s support of migrant rights and asylum could be a liability in the national presidential campaign, analyses at the Washington Post and NBC News suggested that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona)—a “border hawk” who opposed lifting the Title 42 pandemic expulsions policy—would be a vice-presidential running mate who could shield her from charges of being insufficiently tough on the border.

• Liz Goodwin, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, “Mark Kelly Could Help Harris on a Challenging Issue: Immigration” (The Washington Post, July 30, 2024).
• Sahil Kapur, “Border State Hawk Mark Kelly as Vp Pick Could Help Shield Harris on a Major Liability” (NBC News, July 30, 2024).

Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance is to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in southeast Arizona on Thursday.

• Brett Samuels, “Vance to Visit Southern Border as Trump Campaign Hits Harris on Immigration” (The Hill, July 30, 2024).
• “JD Vance to Visit Cochise County Border With Mexico Thursday” (The Sierra Vista Herald Review, July 30, 2024).

President Joe Biden is to sign a national security memorandum on Wednesday increasing information-sharing between federal and local law enforcement agencies about flows of fentanyl, including cross-border flows.

• Aamer Madhani, “Biden Prods Congress to Act to Curb Fentanyl From Mexico as Trump Paints Harris as Weak on Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 31, 2024).

Venezuelan migrants waiting in Ciudad Juárez for CBP One appointments told La Verdad de Juárez that they are distraught and frustrated by authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent re-election in national voting on July 28. “Everyone is crying, is sad because we had hope that this was going to settle,” said a man who has been waiting four months for a CBP One appointment.

• Raul Flores, “Con Frustracion, Venezolanos en Ciudad Juarez Rechazan Resultados de la Eleccion en Venezuela” (La Verdad (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), July 30, 2024).

In response to the Venezuelan outcome and likely repression, Antonia Urrejola, a former Chilean foreign minister and ex-president of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, advised the region’s governments to “begin to prepare a coordinated response to the migratory wave [from Venezuela] that could occur in the coming weeks or months.”

• Francisco Artaza, “Antonia Urrejola, Excanciller: “Es Urgente Que los Paises de la Region Coordinen una Respuesta para una Nueva Ola Migratoria Venezolana”” (La Tercera (Chile), July 30, 2024).

With migrant arrivals at the border down to levels not seen since the fall of 2020, New York City is now measuring fewer than 1,000 migrants seeking shelter for the first time since October 2022, Gothamist reported.

• Arya Sundaram, “Weekly Migrant Arrivals in Nyc Dip Below 1,000 for the First Time Since 2022” (Gothamist, July 30, 2024).

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York), Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois), and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) introduced the “Destination Reception Assistance Act,” which would assist asylum-seeking migrants and the U.S. communities receiving them. Several prominent Democratic legislators and NGO leaders added comments endorsing the bill.

• Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), “Senator Markey and Reps. Meng, Ramirez, Espaillat Introduce Destination Reception Assistance Act to Support Local Reception of New Arrivals” (U.S. Senate, July 30, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The New York Times fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that crime has declined in Venezuela because Nicolás Maduro’s regime has sent the country’s criminals to the United States. This is false: to the extent that crime has decreased in Venezuela, it represents a consolidation of organized crime control within the country, with fewer competing gangs.

• Jorge Valencia, “Trump Says Venezuela Sends Criminals to the U.S. Here’s What to Know.” (The New York Times, July 31, 2024).

The conservative outlet NewsNation, citing a Border Patrol “internal safety bulletin,” reported that 1,000 members of Venezuela’s “Tren de Aragua” organized crime group are in the United States with orders to attack police. West Texas border district Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) gave comments amplifying the allegation.

• Ali Bradley, “Over 1,000 Venezuelan Crime Organization Members in US” (NewsNation, July 30, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, “10,000 Foreign Criminals Have Slipped Through Border, Congressman Says” (Border Report, July 30, 2024).

Due to a suspension of government funding, five temporary shelters for in-transit migrants closed in Guatemala between November 2023 and March 2024, according to Expediente Público.

• Marysabel Aldana, “Cierran Casas para Migrantes en Guatemala” (Expediente Publico, July 31, 2024).

On the Right

• Elizabeth Heckman, “Texas Governor, Border Patrol Council Say They’ve Never Heard From Vp Harris: ‘Abject Failure’” (Fox News, July 30, 2024).