August 26, 2024

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Developments

Panama sent a second U.S.-funded deportation plane to Colombia on August 24, following a flight on August 20. The Colombian citizens aboard were detained after migrating through the treacherous Darién Gap jungle between the two nations. Panama plans flights to Ecuador on August 29, to Colombia on August 30, and to India on September 3.

• “Thcartwright @Thcartwright on Twitter” (Twitter, August 24, 2024).

Roger Mojica, the new director of Panama’s Migration Service (SMN), told local media that the country’s National Border Service (SENAFRONT) force is working with the U.S. government on “a plan to improve the profiling and biometrics of migrants” passing through the Darién route. Mojica voiced concern that an exodus of 4 to 5 million Venezuelan migrants could result from repression and turmoil following the Venezuelan government’s illegitimate claim to have won July 28 elections.

• Camila Riano, “Panama y ee.uu. Fortalecen Medidas para Enfrentar Inminente Migracion Masiva” (ECO TV Panama, August 25, 2024).

According to EFE citing an August 25 Panamanian government statement, 231,089 people have migrated through the Darién Gap jungles so far in 2024. That is fewer than 333,704 during the first eight months of 2023. Of these migrants, 66.3 percent have been Venezuelan, while Colombian and Ecuadorian citizens have been nearly equal at 6.3 percent each. Chinese citizens are in fourth place with 5.2 percent of the total; 4.8 percent have been Haitian. Migration has been dropping: from 31,049 people in June, to 20,519 in July, to 9,497 so far in August. (Panama’s migration authority has not yet updated its presentation of official statistics.)

• “El 66 % de los 230.000 Migrantes Que Han Cruzado el Darien en 2024 Son Venezolanos” (EFE, El Universo (Guayaquil Ecuador), August 25, 2024).

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is in Cartagena, Colombia for a meeting with the foreign ministers of Colombia and Panama to discuss “irregular migration and countering transnational criminal organizations.”

• “Eeuu, Colombia y Panama se Reunen para Tratar Migracion Irregular y Crimen Transnacional” (EFE, Swissinfo.ch, August 25, 2024).
• “Steve Herman @w7voa@journa.host on Mastodon” (journa.host, Mastodon, August 25, 2024).

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on August 25, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance repeatedly evaded questions about whether a new Trump administration would seek to separate migrant families apprehended at the border, as happened in 2017-18.

• Alexandra Marquez, “Vance Dodges on Whether Trump’s Immigration Policy Would Lead to Family Separations” (NBC News, August 25, 2024).
• Julianne Mcshane, “Jd Vance Leaves the Door Open to Family Separations in a New Trump Administration” (Mother Jones, August 25, 2024).

During an August 22 campaign visit to the border in southeast Arizona, Donald Trump held a press conference alongside a stretch of border wall that was in fact built during the Obama administration, the Washington Post reported. “Smugglers have breached the barrier thousands of times, including while Trump was in office,” the Post’s analysis continued. “The wall has been tunneled under and climbed over. It has been walked around and sawed through. It has not stopped migration any more that it has stopped drug and human smuggling.”

• Erin Patrick o’connor, Isaac Arnsdorf, Marianne Levine, “Trump Event at Wall Obama Built Highlights an Unkept Promise” (The Washington Post, August 25, 2024).

Reports published last Friday by the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Sentinel fact-checked some of the inaccuracies in Trump’s claims about migrants’ participation in crime, the number of migrant apprehensions during his tenure, and the notion that Venezuela is sending the occupants of its prisons and mental institutions to the border.

• Emily Bregel, “Trump’s Arizona Border Visit Heavy on Security Talk, False Claims” (The Arizona Daily Star, August 23, 2024).

The Trump campaign is presenting those claims at a website it calls “Kamala Border Bloodbath.”

• Brett Samuels, “Trump Campaign Launches Website Targeting Harris on ‘Border Bloodbath’” (The Hill, August 23, 2024).

A team of trainers from Spain and South America were in Ciudad Juárez to offer training to the Chihuahua State Police force’s SWAT team, Border Report reported.

• Julian Resendiz, “Foreign Advisers Help Sharpen Chihuahua Swat Team’s Skills” (Border Report, August 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The New York Times’s Hamed Aleaziz examined the sharp drop in Border Patrol migrant apprehensions that followed the Biden administration’s early June imposition of a rule restricting access to asylum between the border’s ports of entry. While the rule has made the border quieter at a key electoral moment, “migrant activists say Mr. Biden’s executive order is weeding out far too many people, including those who should be allowed to have their cases heard.”

• Hamed Aleaziz, “Biden’s Asylum Restrictions Are Working as Predicted, and as Warned” (The New York Times, August 24, 2024).

The Houston Chronicle looked at data showing that the “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown carried out by Texas’s Republican state government has not reduced migration to Texas any more than to other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Benjamin Wermund, “New Border Data Shows Texas’ Migrant Crackdown Hasn’t Driven Down Crossings More Than in Other States” (The Houston Chronicle, August 23, 2024).

At the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Impact site, Dara Lind published an explainer about the immigration provisions of “Project 2025,” a plan for a second Trump administration drawn up by a team of experts and officials close to the Trump campaign. The document contains “a clear plan to restrict legal immigration of all kinds, while laying the foundations for a potential campaign of mass deportation.” These “foundations,” however, do not include an actual detailed deportation plan.

• Dara Lind, “What Project 2025 Says About Immigration” (American Immigration Council, August 23, 2024).

At the Washington Post, columnist Eduardo Porter looked at the logistical obstacles that would stand in the way of Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations of several million undocumented migrants if elected. “Flying 11 million people out would require 58,201 flights in fully loaded Boeing 737-800s.”

• Eduardo Porter, “Trump’s Deportation Plan Would Be Nearly Impossible to Implement” (The Washington Post, August 26, 2024).

The Democratic Party’s “overall message” on the border and migration—especially asylum—during the 2024 campaign and last week’s party convention “has been decidedly more hard-line than it has been in decades,” noted a New York Times news analysis. Kamala Harris is expected to release a full immigration platform in a few weeks, the Times reported.

• Jazmine Ulloa, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “On Immigration, Harris and Democrats Walk a Delicate — and Harder — Line” (The New York Times, August 25, 2024).

The New York Times profiled Juan Ciscomani, a Mexican-born Republican who represents southeast Arizona, a swing district, in the House of Representatives. Ciscomani’s support for the Republican House majority’s hardline border bill (H.R. 2, which passed the House on a party-line vote in May 2023) could cost him support against his Democratic challenger in November, the Times noted.

• Robert Jimison, “In Critical Border District, Republican Pairs Immigrant Story With Tough Stance” (The New York Times, August 24, 2024).

In Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, “The phenomenon of people migrating on bicycles“ along the searingly hot coastal route toward Oaxaca ”began about two years ago,” according to a report by Rogelio Ramos in Chiapas Paralelo.

• Rogelio Ramos, “Migrar en Bicicleta” (Chiapas Paralelo (Chiapas), August 25, 2024).

On the Right

• Katherine Donlevy, “Trump Supporters Rip Kamala Harris for Showing Off Border Walls She Claims to Hate in Campaign Ad” (The New York Post, August 24, 2024).