August 14, 2024

Get daily links in your email

Developments

The New York Times reported on a $45 million settlement that CBP has reached with about 1,000 female employees of its Office of Field Operations, who sued the agency for having “instilled a culture of shame and perpetuated a fear of retaliation” against employees who become pregnant. CBP must now draft a new policy for pregnant employees and train managers and supervisors.

The story conveyed recent statistics about the CBP workforce’s gender makeup: women are about 24 percent of employees, less than the FBI’s 30 percent. (Meanwhile, CBP’s Border Patrol component struggles to exceed 5 percent.) CBP hopes that its recruitment classes will be made up of 30 percent women by 2030, but new hires are currently 20 percent women.

• Eileen Sullivan, “Transfers and Pay Cuts: Pregnant Officers Accuse Border Agency of Discrimination” (The New York Times, August 13, 2024).

Though Panama’s new government has yet to update official statistics about Darién Gap migration beyond May, a UNHCR update revealed that 31,049 people migrated through the treacherous jungle region in June. Of that total, 23,509 (76%) were citizens of Venezuela. That pace of roughly 1,000 migrants per day has been steady since January, but is a drop from well over 2,000 per day in August and September of 2023. (Preliminary data from July, gleaned from Panamanian government press releases, points to a drop in the flow to just over 700 per day.)

• “Darien Panama: Mixed Movements Protection Monitoring July 2024” (UN Refugee Agency, August 13, 2024).

Migrant shelters in Tijuana have been seeing more arrivals of unaccompanied minors, municipal migration official Enrique Lucero told Border Report. Often, Lucero said, parents are “sending their children to the border ahead of themselves, hoping to reunite at some point in the future.” He also cited “a belief that unaccompanied minors are accepted into the United States immediately and given asylum.”

• Salvador Rivera, “More Unaccompanied Children Showing Up at Tijuana Shelters” (Border Report, August 13, 2024).

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement defending the work of Catholic migrant shelters, like Annunciation House in El Paso and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, being targeted by Texas’ state attorney general for allegations of facilitating illegal migration and smuggling. It reads, “Anti-Catholic bias, political motivations, and misinformation have long undergirded these claims. Assisting newcomers, however, is one of the Corporal Works of Mercy and integral to Catholic identity.”

• Hannah Hiester, “Usccb Responds to Claims That Catholic Nonprofits on Border Support Illegal Immigrants” (catholicvote.org, August 13, 2024).

The conservative New York Post lamented that DHS’s Family Expedited Removal (FERM) Program—a Biden administration initiative that puts some family asylum seekers through express adjudication processes, raising due process concerns—has deported just 2,600 of 24,000 migrants enrolled since May 2023.

• Jennie Taer, “Biden Program Meant to Remove Illegal Migrant Families Has Instead Allowed 90% to Stay in Us” (The New York Post, August 13, 2024).

Senior Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking for the number of “potentially dangerous adults in the United States” who have applied with the Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to take custody of unaccompanied children who crossed the border.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Hhs Under Gop Fire for Putting Migrant Children ‘in Danger’” (The Washington Examiner, August 13, 2024).

In Kinney County, which occupies a small piece of the border between Del Rio and Eagle Pass in mid-Texas, Sheriff Brad Coe—a staunch supporter of Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) Operation Lone Star—is now training deputies in the use of less-lethal weapons like pepper ball and tear gas launchers in order to “manage crowds” of migrants, NewsNation reported.

• Ali Bradley, “Border Sheriffs Given New Weapons to Disperse Migrant Crowds” (NewsNation, August 13, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Three major media outlets published analyses of Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s role in the Biden administration’s border and migration policies. They generally conclude that Harris was in no way the administration’s so-called “Border Czar,” and that she had a mixed record leading its strategy for addressing root causes of migration from Central America.

Harris’s Central America role “was a decidedly long-term—and limited—approach to a humanitarian crisis, and it has allowed Republicans to tie her to the broader fight over the border,” the Associated Press noted.

• Chris Megerian, Dan Merica, Nicholas Riccardi, “Presented With Rise in Border Crossings, Harris Chose a Long-Term Approach to the Problem” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 14, 2024).

Former Biden administration National Security Council official Katie Tobin told the BBC that Harris “deserves credit for ‘a good news story’ in Central America”: notable drops in migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras since 2021.

• Will Grant, “Trump Attacks Harris Over Us Border Policing – Was It Her Job?” (BBC (UK), August 13, 2024).

“The Biden-Harris administration’s record on border enforcement is certainly mixed, but that should not distract from the progress made through Harris’ efforts to address the causes of immigration,” Wayne Cornelius of U.C. San Diego wrote at the Los Angeles Times.

• Wayne A. Cornelius, “Trump and Other Republicans Call Kamala Harris a Failed ‘Border Czar.’ Here’s the Truth” (UC San Diego, The Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2024).

In Arizona, Democratic Senate candidate Rubén Gallego, a House member with a record of progressive policy views, is now proposing “increased funding for border patrol, border technology, and more border agents while also ‘advocating for sane, comprehensive immigration reforms, things that would take care of our Dreamers,’” NBC News reported. Gallego leads Republican opponent Kari Lake in polls for the vote to replace retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I).

• Alex Tabet, “Democrat Ruben Gallego Leans Into Border Security in Battleground Senate Race” (NBC News, August 13, 2024).

On the Right

• Bethany Blankley, “Polls: Majority of Americans Want Troops Sent to Border, Oppose Illegal Immigration” (The Center Square, August 13, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Sheriffs Slam Biden-Harris Admin Over Failed Border Policies That Let in Tren de Aragua After Group Gave ‘Green Light’ to Shoot Cops” (The New York Post, August 13, 2024).