August 22, 2024

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Developments

A few speakers addressed the border and immigration policy at the Democratic Party’s convention on August 21. Most of the messaging surrounded efforts to combat organized crime and fentanyl trafficking. Some, though, attacked Republican nominee Donald Trump for urging Republican legislators to kill the “Border Act,” a bill resulting from negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators that failed in February. That compromise legislation’s provisions included some items that Democrats would not have supported in the past, like a ban on asylum access at busy times and a big increase in ICE detention capacity.

Analysts and pundits saw some of the Democrats’ convention rhetoric calling for tougher border security measures and limits on asylum—language reflected in the party’s platform—as indicative of a rightward shift within the party on border and migration policy, responding to similar shifts in public opinion.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris addresses the convention this evening.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Fin Gomez, “Dnc Speakers Address Immigration as Party Embraces Tougher Border Measures” (CBS News, August 21, 2024).
• Sahil Kapur, “‘The Border Is Broken’: Democrats Solidify Shift to Tougher Migration Stance at Convention” (NBC News, August 21, 2024).
• Christian Paz, “The Major Political Transformation Flying Under the Radar at the Dnc” (Vox, August 22, 2024).
• Robert Moore, “Veronica Escobar Speaks About Immigration Policy at Democratic National Convention” (El Paso Matters, August 21, 2024).
• Billal Rahman, “Trump Set to Visit U.S.-Mexico Border Ahead of Harris Dnc Speech” (Newsweek, August 22, 2024).

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will make a campaign visit to the border today in Sierra Vista, Cochise County, southeast Arizona. It is a part of the border where voters trend Republican, leading Democrats in registrations by a two-to-one margin, unlike the much “bluer” Nogales area just to the west.

Trump’s event—with County Sheriff Mark Dannels, a longtime proponent of hard-line border policies, and representatives of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing most agents—will be closed to the public. Local Democrats are deriding the visit as a “photo op.”

• Anna Giaritelli, “Trump Tries to Upstage Harris Convention Limelight With Southern Border Visit” (The Washington Examiner, August 22, 2024).
• Sarah Lapidus, Stephanie Murray, “Trump Turns to Arizona’s Southern Border to Counter Harris Momentum” (The Arizona Republic, August 22, 2024).
• Derek Staahl, “Arizona Border Towns Prepare for Trump’s Visit to Cochise County” (Arizona’s Family, August 22, 2024).
• Caitlin Sievers, “Arizona Dems Say Harris Will Champion Border Reform, Unlike Trump’s Photo Ops” (The Arizona Mirror, August 22, 2024).

At an event yesterday in Edinburg, Texas with “hundreds” of agents in attendance, the Border Patrol union offered its election endorsement to Texas’s arch-conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R). (The National Border Patrol Council first endorsed Donald Trump during the 2016 primary campaign.) The crowd booed when Kamala Harris’s name was mentioned, Border Report reported. “Cruz said a Spanish curse word to the crowd when referring to the administration and drew cheers from the Border Patrol agents assembled.”

• Sandra Sanchez, “Border Patrol Union Endorses Cruz” (Border Report, August 21, 2024).

Brazil is suspending visa-free travel to citizens of some Asian nations, including India, Nepal, and Vietnam. Some of those travelers have been seeking asylum upon arrival in Brazil, then continuing their journey northward, through the Darién Gap and toward the United States.

• Mauricio Savarese, “Brazil Will Restrict Entry to Some Asian Nationals, Aiming to Curb Migration to the Us and Canada” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 21, 2024).
• Ricardo Brito, “Brazil to Tighten Entry Rules to Curb Migration to North America” (Reuters, August 21, 2024).

The number of migrants passing through the Darién Gap in August totaled more than 8,000 by August 19 or 20, according to coverage of a U.S.-backed deportation flight from Panama to Colombia in Spain’s El País, which cited the new director of the country’s National Migration Service (SNM). That is about 400 people per day: a sharp drop from roughly 1,000 per day during the first half of 2024 and over 2,000 per day at times in late 2023. It would be the lowest daily average measured in the Darién in any month since April 2022.

• Santiago Torrado, “Panama Comienza la Deportacion de Migrantes Que Cruzaron la Selva del Darien” (El Pais (Spain), August 21, 2024).

The current drop in migration at the border led Texas’s Republican state government to pause, in late June, its program of busing some released migrants to Democratic-governed cities, the New York Times reported.

• J. David Goodman, “Texas Stopped Busing Migrants to Democratic Cities in Late June” (The New York Times, August 21, 2024).
• Megan Stringer, “How Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Made the Border a Top Priority for Democrats” (Axios, August 21, 2024).

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is continuing legal actions against the state’s charities assisting recently released asylum seekers and migrants. He is demanding that a representative from the Team Brownsville migrant shelter be deposed by the end of the month “to answer how the NGO assists migrants—among other things,” noted Aarón Torres of the Dallas Morning News.

• Chelsie Kramer, “Texas Attorney General Paxton Continues Fight Against Ngos That Serve Migrants” (American Immigration Council, August 21, 2024).
• “Aaron Torres @aarontorres_ on Twitter” (Twitter, August 21, 2024).

In September, Mexico’s refugee agency (Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid, COMAR) plans to open a new facility, or “Multiservice Center,” to attend to migrants in the country’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. A short drive from the Guatemala border, Tapachula’s perpetually overwhelmed COMAR office receives the largest number of migrants arriving and applying for asylum—two-thirds of Mexico’s applications so far this year.

• “Anuncian Nuevo Centro para Atender a Migrantes en Tapachula, Mexico” (EFE, Prensa Libre (Guatemala), August 21, 2024).

Discussing the foreign policy of the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who leaves office on September 30, Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena hailed what she called the “Mexican Human Mobility Model,” claiming, “We have changed the narrative even in the United States, which previously did not talk about structural causes, this has been achieved thanks to President López Obrador.”

• “El Gobierno de Mexico Implementa una Politica Exterior Humanista Cercana a la Gente” (Presidencia de Mexico, August 21, 2024).

Guatemalan police arrested seven people accused of being the smugglers who arranged the journey of some of the 53 migrants who died while locked in the back of an overheated tractor-trailer near San Antonio, Texas in June 2022.

• Sonia Perez D., “Guatemalan Police Arrest 7 Accused of Trafficking the 53 Migrants Who Asphyxiated in Texas in 2022” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 21, 2024).

Prosecutors in Mexico’s violence-plagued border state of Tamaulipas won convictions and long prison terms for 11 members of the once-powerful Zetas cartel responsible for killing 122 migrants, whom they pulled off of buses, tortured, and massacred in 2010 and 2011.

• “Mexico Convicts 11 Cartel Gunmen in Killings of 122 Bus Passengers Near Us Border Over 2 Years” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 21, 2024).

Hitmen attacked, and gravely wounded, the chief magistrate of the Tamaulipas state supreme court. The attack took place in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, which is distant from the border itself.

• Carlos Alvarez Acevedo, “Atacan a Balazos al Magistrado Presidente del Tribunal Electoral de Tamaulipas” (Revista Zeta (Tijuana Mexico), August 21, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A document from UnidosUS (formerly known as the National Council of La Raza) endorsed “firm border enforcement,” particularly improvements to ports of entry and prioritizing asylum access for asylum seekers who come to ports of entry. Among other proposals is the creation of “an ‘immigration FEMA’ equipped with the funding and authority to respond to large-scale migration events.”

• “Addressing Our Border Challenges Through a Framework That Is Firm, Fair and Free of Cruelty” (UnidosUS, August 21, 2024).
• Luis Montoya, “Unidosus Says Its First-Ever Border Plan Reflects Border Concerns of Latinos” (The Rio Grande Guardian, August 21, 2024).

At the Washington Examiner, Anna Giaritelli looked at the policies that have led to the current drop in migrant encounters at the border, and at the Biden administration’s use of alternative migration pathways that avoid the border, like humanitarian parole.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Biden Expands Border Workarounds Despite Major Drop in Illegal Crossings” (The Washington Examiner, August 22, 2024).

On the Right

• Gabe Kaminsky, “Kamala Harris Promoted Fundraisers by Abolish Ice Activists” (The Washington Examiner, August 21, 2024).