August 12, 2024

Adam Isacson

Director for Defense Oversight

Adam Isacson has worked on defense, security, and peacebuilding in Latin America since 1994. He now directs WOLA’s Defense Oversight...

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Developments

At campaign rallies in Arizona and Nevada, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris again sought to “flip the script” on the U.S.-Mexico border issue, using it as a line of attack on Republican nominee Donald Trump. Harris called for “comprehensive reform that includes, yes, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.”

Though reforms like a pathway to citizenship have stalled in the Senate for lack of 60 votes to break a filibuster, Harris is promising tougher border measures that would only require appropriations (50 votes), like hiring more Border Patrol agents.

Dylan Wells, “Harris Goes on Offense Over the Border in Attempt to Undercut Trump” (The Washington Post, August 10, 2024).
Darlene Superville, Gabriel Sandoval, Nicholas Riccardi, Seung Min Kim, “Kamala Harris Makes an Immigration Pitch in Arizona as She Fights to Gain Ground in the Sun Belt” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 9, 2024).

At Salon, Adriel Orozco of the Migration Policy Institute explained why attacks on Harris’s vice-presidential role addressing causes of migration in Central America, misconstruing her as a “Border Czar,” are inaccurate.

Nandika Chatterjee, “The Gop’s “Border Czar” Attack on Kamala Harris Misstates Her Role on Immigration, Expert Says” (Salon, August 9, 2024).

Anticipating “a potential increase in migration flows” through treacherous deserts where hundreds of migrants die each year, Doctors Without Borders is resuming a medical mission along the border in Arizona.

“Supporting Local Groups Helping People on the Move at the Us-Mexico Border” (Medicos Sin Fronteras, August 9, 2024).

In a Guardian photo essay from Colombia’s department of Norte de Santander, near the Venezuela border, Euan Wallace reported that migrants and shelters are bracing for a “new spike in migration” from Venezuela following authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro’s widely disputed claim to have won July 28 elections.

Euan Wallace, “‘Whose Fault Is It? The Dictator’: The Venezuelan Refugees on a Knife-Edge at the Colombian Border – Photo Essay” (The Guardian (Uk), August 9, 2024).

The DHS Inspector General published a report on January 2024 unannounced inspections of CBP facilities in Border Patrol’s mid-Texas Del Rio Sector. It found that agents were holding 23 percent to 31 percent of detainees longer than the 72-hour standard due to limited ICE bed space and prioritization of family units over single adults. All inspected facilities had lower-than-required medical staffing levels, and agents were not consistently logging meals and welfare checks.

Capacity was probably less of an issue: January 2024 was a less-busy month for Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, with 16,710 migrant apprehensions, down sharply from 71,050 in December 2023.

Results of January 2024 Unannounced Inspections of Cbp Holding Facilities in the del Rio Area (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Thursday, August 8, 2024).

Mexico’s army destroyed 1,347 weapons confiscated in Tijuana. “Most” entered the border city from the United States, which has far more permissive gun ownership laws, the head of the city’s public safety office told Border Report.

Salvador Rivera, “Mexican Army Destroys 1,347 Firearms in Tijuana; Most Had Us Origins, Officials Say” (Border Report, August 9, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

At the New York Times, Lulu García-Navarro profiled Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), who led Republican efforts to negotiate border reform legislation with the Senate’s Democratic majority in late 2023 and early 2024. The “border deal” bill that negotiators came up with failed in early February amid vocal opposition from Donald Trump. Lankford said he resisted chief Democratic negotiator Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-Connecticut) demand that the bill include a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” because Republicans would have viewed it as a “bill-killer.”

Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “The Man Who Tried to Solve Immigration for the g.o.p.” (The New York Times, August 10, 2024).

The New York Times published a full-length obituary of Eddie Canales (1948-2024), the co-founder and director of the South Texas Human Rights Center in Falfurrias, Texas, who sought to prevent migrant deaths by leaving water stations on ranchland in Brooks County, north of the Rio Grande Valley border region.

Adam Nossiter, “Eddie Canales, 76, Dies; Gave Migrants Water, and Dignity” (The New York Times, August 10, 2024).

The Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh and David Bier penned a column at the libertarian publication Reason warning that a temporary suspension of the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela could lead to more illegal entries of migrants from those countries at the U.S.-Mexico border. The authors call into question the Department of Homeland Security’s justification for suspending the parole program: suspicions of fraud in sponsorship applications. Of irregularities in applications, they contend, much are the result of human error in the filling out of online forms, not malice.

Alex Nowrasteh, David Bier, “Biden’s Dhs Halting Migrant Program Raises Border Security Concerns” (Cato Institute, Reason, August 9, 2024).

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington looked at reasons why Tejano voters in south Texas’s Rio Grande Valley borderlands are increasingly voting Republican. They include social conservatism and support for law enforcement and fossil fuels, along with support for stricter policies toward newly arriving migrants.

Ed Pilkington, “Latinos in Once True-Blue Texas Border Zone Are Getting on the Trump Train” (The Guardian (Uk), August 10, 2024).

The Markup published an interview with Francisco Lara-García, a sociologist at Hofstra University who has studied border surveillance technology and its impact on civil liberties and everyday life in the borderlands. “Personally, the thing that is most unsettling is: the ways that you don’t know that you’re being surveilled.”

Monique O. Madan, “The ‘Unsettling,’ Nearly Normalized Surveillance Tech Monitoring the U.S.-Mexico Border” (The Markup, August 10, 2024).

In a visit to El Paso, EFE found “barbed wire fences over the Rio Grande (the natural divide with Mexico), prison-style watchtowers, helicopters, motion detectors and the omnipresence of the Border Patrol.”